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GINX'S BABY. 



En quid agis? duplici in diversum scinderis hamo 
Hunccine an hunc sequeris ? 

Nam et luctata canis nodum abripit, attamen illi 
Quum fugit a collo trahitur pars longa catena? ! 



GINX'S BABY: 



J^ts Btrtfj atti otfjer fHistorttmcs. 



V 



A SATIRE. 





BOSTON: 
JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 

(LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.) 



I87I. 

A 



s^ 



w 
■$/ 1 



Boston : 
Stereotyped and Fruited by Rand, A very< Cs* Frye. 



PREFACE. 



Critic. — 7" never read a more improbable story (n my 
life. 

AUTHOR. — Notwithstanding, it may be true. 



NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



Three or four weeks after the publication of 
" Ginx's Baby," the author is called upon by the 
publishers to revise it for a second edition. In 
this notoriety of the fortunes of " Ginx's Baby," 
the most deep and real satisfaction comes from 
the general recognition of the sincere and earnest 
purpose of the history. This sufficiently neutral- 
izes the misunderstandings or misjudgments of 
some two or three critics. 

To those who have criticised the book in the 
modern fashion, the author has only most gently 
to deprecate that they should have felt themselves 
constrained to make objections when they obviously 
had none to make. To take an instance : One not 
unkindly critic declares that the author " oftek 
mistakes invective for satire," — a remark so para- 

7 



8 NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

doxical as to require solution. The author is con- 
scious of having deliberately used both invective 
and satire ; hut the error of confounding them he 
returns to the critic. The same judge observes, 
" The only man described in the book who has any 
indefinite (qucere, definite?) remedies to propose 
?or the diseases of modern civilization is a gener- 
ous-hearted fanatic, rather than a judicious states- 
man ; " and he records his suspicion that Sir 
Charles Sterling's most impracticable suggestions 
are "especially dear to the author." Did it not 
occur to the critic that the author intended to rep- 
resent in Charles Sterling a "generous-hearted 
fanatic," and that his intention is clearly written 
on every page of the baronet's exaggerated talk ? 
A man made an enthusiast by too keen a sensi- 
tiveness to wrong and sorrow is not an unnatural 
or unadmirable character : nay, much wisdom 
may play brightly through the thunder-clouds of 
his passion. 

Lastly, the author desires to set himself right 
with the reader on one point in which it seems he 
is likely to be misunderstood. The editor of " The 
Spectator," otherwise applauding, had referred to 



NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 9 

the passage on the " Timbuctoo question," pp. 
115, 116, as "utterly and basely wrong." In 
" The Spectator " of June 4 appeared the following 
letter from the author ; commending which to his 
readers and critics, he confides to their consciences 
the second edition : — 

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE SPECTATOR." 

Sir, — In your kindly notice of my little book on Satur- 
day last, you did me an unintentional though an almost de- 
served injustice. "Will you allow me to relieve myself from 
it without doffing my incognito 1 You have read a passage 
on " the Timbuctoo question " as an expression of that ex- 
treme and ignoble radicalism which would subordinate the 
honor of the nation to its wealth. Perhaps my incautious 
anger has left the passage open to that interpretation ; but I 
wish to disclaim it. I revolt from that doctrine as much as 
you ; and, if you knew my name, you would perhaps recog- 
nize one who has publicly and practically striven to refute it. 

My mind, when I wrote the passage referred to, was indig- 
nantly alert to the contrast between the fury, vigor, and sac- 
rifice so quick for such an enterprise as that, and the mourn- 
ful debility of zeal in the redress of our own home sorrows. 
I may be " sometimes unjust : " God knows I wish I were all 
untrue. Besides, you will allow me to think, as I do, that a 
little politic management' and expenditure might have res- 



10 NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

cued the Abyssinian captives without an expedition costing 
ten million pounds. Otherwise, I agree with you that a 
people unchary of its honor at any sacrifice is fit only to 
be enslaved by some nobler race. 
I am, sir, &c, 

The Author of " Ginx's Baby." 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 

# 

WHAT GINX DID WITH HIM. 

PAGE. 

- I. Ab Initio 13 

n. Home, Sweet Home 15 

HI. Work and Ideas 19 

IV. Digressive, and may be skipped without mutilating the 

History 21 

V. Reasons and Resolves 24 

VI. The Antagonism of Law and Necessity .... 25 

VII. Malthus and Man • . 29 

VHI. The Baby's First Translation 33 

PART H. 



■WHAT CHARITY AND THE CHURCHES DID WITH HIM. 



I. The Milk of Human Kindness, Mother's Milk, and 

Milk of the Word .... 
H. The Protestant Detoctoral Association 
HI. The Sacrament of Baptism . . . 
IV. Law on Behalf of Gospel . . . 

V. Magistrate's Law 

VI. Popery and Protestantism in the Queen's Bench 

VH. A Protester, but not a Protestant 

VHI. " See how these Christians love One Another ! " 

IX. Good Samaritans, and Good-Samaritan Twopences 

X. The Force; and a Specimen of its Weakness . 

XI. The Unity of the Spirit and the Bond of Peace 

XII. No Funds, no Faith, no Works .... 

XHI. In Transitu . 

11 



the 



35 
41 
43 
44 
49 
52 
55 
66 
02 
G4 
66 
76 
77 



12 CONTENTS. 

PART in. 

■WHAT THE PARISH DID WITn HIM. 

PAGE. 

I. Parochial Knots; to be untied without Prejudice . . 79 

II. A Board of Guardians 80 

III. " The World is my Parish " 84 

TV. Without Prejudice to Any One hut the Guardians . . 85 

V. An Ungodly Jungle 88 

VI. Parochial Benevolence ; and Another Translation . . 92 

part rv. 

WHAT THE CLUBS AND POLITICIANS DID WITH HIM. 

I. Moved on 95 

n. Club Ideas 96 

HI. A Thorough-paced Reformer, if not a Revolutionary . 101 

IV. Very Broad Views 106 

V. Party Tactics, and Political Obstructions to Social 

Reform 113 

VI. Amateur Debating in a High Legislative Body . . . 119 

PART V. 

WHAT GINX'S BABY DID WITH niMSELF. 

The Last Chapter 123 



GINX'S BABY. 



T 



PART I. 

WHAT GINX DID WITH HIM. 
I.— Ab Initio. 

HE name of the father of Ginx's Baby was Ginx. 
By a not unexceptional coincidence, its mother was 
Mrs. Ginx. The gender of Ginx's Baby was masculine. 
On the day when our hero was born, Mr. and Mrs. 
Ginx were living at Number Five, Rosemary Street, in 
tbe city of Westminster. The being then and there 
brought into the world was not the only human entity to 
which the title of " Ginx's Baby " was or had been ap- 
propriate. Ginx had been married to Betsy Hicks at 
St. John's, Westminster, on the twenty-fifth day of Oc- 
tober, 18 — , as appears from the "marriage lines "re- 
tained by Betsy Ginx, and carefully collated by me with 
the original register. Our hero was their thirteenth 
child. Patient inquiry has enabled me to verify the fol- 
lowing history of their propagations. On July 25, 
the year after their marriage, Mrs. Ginx was safely 
delivered of a girl. No announcement of this ap- 

13 



14 GINX'S BABY. 

peared in the newspapers. On the 10th of April 
following, the whole neighborhood, including Great 
Smith Street, Marsham Street, Great and Little Peter 
Streets, Regent Street, Horseferry Road, and Strutton 
Ground, was convulsed by the report that a woman 
named Ginx had given birth to " a triplet," consisting 
of two girls and a boy. The news penetrated to Dean's 
Yard and the ancient school of Westminster. The 
dean, who accepted nothing on trust, sent to verify the 
report ; his messenger bearing a bundle of baby-clothes 
from the dean's wife, who thought that the mother 
could scarcely have provided for so large an addition to 
her family. The schoolboys, on their way to the play- 
ground at Vincent Square, slyly diverged to have a look 
at the curiosity ; paying sixpence a head to Mrs. Ginx's 
friend and crony, Mrs. Spittal, who pocketed the money, 
and said nothing about it to the sick woman. This birth 
was announced in all the newspapers throughout the 
kingdom, with the further news that her Majesty the 
Queen had been graciously pleased to forward to Mrs. 
Ginx the sum of three pounds. 

What could have possessed the woman, I can't say ; but, 
about a twelvemonth after, Mrs. Ginx, with the assist- 
ance of two doctors hastily fetched from the hospital by 
her frightened husband, nearly perished in a fresh effort 
of maternity. This time, two sons and two daughters 
fell to the lot of the happy pair. Her Majesty sent four 
pounds. But, whatever peace there was at home, broils 
disturbed the street. The neighbors, who had sent for 
the police on the occasion, were angered by a notoriety 
which was becoming uncomfortable to them, and began 
to testify their feelings in various rough ways. Ginx 



HOME, SWEET HOME. 15 

removed his family to Rosemary Street, where, up to a 
year before the time when Ginx's Baby was born, his 
wife had continued to add to her offspring until the tale 
reached one dozen. It was then that Ginx affection- 
ately but firmly begged that his wife would consider her 
family ways, since, in all conscience, he had fairly earned 
the blessedness of " the man who hath his quiver full of 
them ; " and frankly gave her notice, that as his utmost 
efforts could scarcely maintain their existing family, if 
she ventured to present him with any more, either sin- 
gle or twins or triplets or otherwise, he would most as- 
suredly drown him or her or them in the water-butt, 
and take the consequences. 



II.— Home, Sweet Home. 

The day on which Ginx uttered his awful threat was 
that next to the one wherein number twelve had drawn 
his first breath. His wife lay on the bed, which, at the 
outset of wedded life, they had purchased second-hand 
in Strutton Ground for the sum of nine shillings and 
sixpence. Second-hand! — it had passed through, at 
least, as many hands as tbere were afterwards babies 
born upon it : twelfth or thirteenth hand, a vagabond, 
botched bedstead, type of all the furniture in Ginx's 
rooms and in numberless houses through the vast city. Its 
dimensions were four feet six inches by six feet. When 
Ginx, who was a stout navvy, and Mrs. Ginx, who was, 
you may conceive, a matronly woman, were in it, there 
was little vacant space about them. Yet, as they were 
forced to find resting-places for all the children, it not 



1G GINX'S BABY. 

seldom happened that at least one infant was perilously- 
wedged between the parental bodies ; and, latterly, they 
had been so pressed for room in the household, that two 
younglings were nestled at the foot of the bed. With- 
out foot-boards or pillows, the lodgement of these infants 
was precarious, since any fatuous movement of Ginx's 
legs was likely to expel them head first. However, they 
were safe ; for they were sure to fall on one or other of 
their brothers or sisters. 

I shall be as particular as a valuer, and describe what 
I have seen. The family sleeping-room measured thir- 
teen feet six inches by fourteen feet. Opening out of 
this, and again on the landing of the third floor, was 
their kitchen and sitting-room : it was not quite so large 
as the other. This room contained a press, an old chest 
of drawers, a wooden box (once used for navvy's tools), 
three chairs, a stool, and some cooking-utensils. When, 
therefore, one little Ginx had curled himself up under a 
blanket on the box, and three more had slipped beneath 
a tattered piece of carpet under the table, there still re- 
mained five little bodies to be bedded. For them, an 
old straw-mattress, limp enough to be rolled up and 
thrust under the bed, was at night extended on the floor. 
With this, and a patchwork-quilt, the five were left to 
pack themselves together as best they could : so that 
if Ginx, in some vision of the night, happened to be an- 
gered, and struck out his legs in navvy fashion, it some- 
times came to pass that a couple of children tumbled 
upon the mass of infantile humanity below. 

Not to be described are the dinginess of the walls, 
the smokiness of the ceilings, the grimy windows, the 
heavy, ever-murky atmosphere of these rooms. They 



HOME, SWEET HOME. 17 

were eight feet six inches in- height; and any curious 
statist can calculate the number of cubic feet of air 
which they afforded to each person. 

The other side of the street was fourteen feet distant. 
Behind, the backs of similar tenements came up black 
and cowering over the little yard of Number Five. As 
rare, in the well thus formed, was the circulation of air 
as that of coin in the pockets of the inhabitants. I have 
seen the yard : let me warn you, if you are fastidious, 
not to enter it. Such of the filth of the house as could 
not at night be thrown out of the front-windows was 
there collected, and seldom, if ever, removed. What 
became of it? What becomes of countless such accre- 
tions in like places ? Is a large proportion of these 
filthy atoms absorbed by human creatures living and dy- 
ing, instead of being carried away by scavengers and 
inspectors ? The forty-five big and little lodgers in the 
house were provided with a single office in the corner of 
the yard. It had once been capped by a cistern, long 
since rotted away. 

The street was at one time the prey of the gas com- 
pany ; at another, of the drainage contractors. They 
seemed to delight in turning up the fetid soil, cutting 
deep trenches through various strata of filth, and piling 
up for days or weeks matter that reeked with vegetable 
and animal decay. One needs not affirm that Rosemary 
Street was not so called from its fragrance. If the 
Ginxes and their neighbors preserved any semblance of 
health in this place, the most popular guardian on the 
board must own it a miracle. They, poor people, knew 
nothing of "sanitary reform," "sanitary precautions," 
2 



18 GINX'S BABY. 

" zymotics," " endemics," " epidemics," " deodorizers," 
or " disinfectants." They regarded disease with the 
apathy of creatures who felt it to be inseparable from 
humanity, and with the fatalism of despair. 

Gin was their cardinal prescription, not for cure, but 
for oblivion : " Sold everywhere." A score of palaces 
flourished within call of each other in that dismal dis- 
trict, — gai'ish, rich-looking dens, drawing to the support 
of their vulgar glory the means, the lives, the eternal 
destinies, of the wrecked masses about them. Veritable 
wreckers they who construct these haunts, viler than the 
wretches who place false beacons and plunder bodies on 
the beach. Bring down the real owners of these places, 
and show them their deadly work ! — some of them lead- 
ing philanthropists, eloquent at missionary meetings and 
Bible societies, paying tribute to the Lord out of the 
pockets of dying drunkards, fighting glorious battles for 
slaves, and manfully upholding popular rights. My rich 
publican, — forgive the pun, — before you pay tithes of 
mint and cumin, much more before you claim to be a 
disciple of a certain Nazarene, take a lesson from one 
who restored fourfold the money he had wrung from 
honest toil, or reflect on the case of the man to whom it 
was said, " Go sell all thou hast, and give to the poor." 
The lips from which that counsel dropped offered some 
unpleasant alternatives ; leaving out one, however, which 
nowadays may yet reach you, — the contempt of your 
kind. 



WORK AND IDEAS. 19 



ni. — Work and Ideas. 

I return again to Ginx's menace to his wife, who 
was suckling her infant at the time on the bed. For her 
he had an animal affection, that preserved her from un- 
kindness, even in his cups. His hand had never un- 
manned itself by striking her ; and rarely, indeed, did it 
injure any one else. He wrestled not against flesh and 
blood, or powers or principalities, or wicked spirits in 
high places : he struggled with clods and stones and 
primeval chaos. His hands were horny with the fight ; 
and his nature had perhaps caught some of the dull 
ruggedness of the things wherewith he battled. Hard 
and with a will had he worked through the years of 
wedded life ; and, to speak him fair, he had acted 
honestly, within the litnits of his knowledge and means, 
for the good of his family. How narrow were those 
limits ! Every week he threw into the lap of Mrs. 
Ginx the eighteen or twenty shillings which his strength 
and temperance enabled him continuously to earn, less 
sixpence reserved for the public-house, whither he re- 
treated on Sundays after the family dinner. A dozen 
children, over-running the space in his rooms, was then 
a strain beyond the endurance of Ginx. Nor had he 
the heart to try the common plan, and turn his children 
out of doors, on the chance of their being picked up in 
a raid of Sunday-school teachers. So he turned out 
himself to talk with the humbler spirits of " The Dragon," 
or listen sleepily while alehouse demagogues prescribed 
remedies for State abuses. 

Our friend was nearly as guiltless of knowledge as if 
Eve had never rifled the tree whereon it grew. Vacant 



20 GINX'S BABY. 

of policies were his thoughts ; innocent he of ideas of 
State-craft. He knew there was a Queen : he had seen 
her. Lords and Commons were to him vague deities 
possessing strange powers : indeed, he had been present 
when some of his better-informed companions had recog- 
nized with cheers certain gentlemen — of whom Ginx's 
estimate was expressed by a reference to his test of su- 
periority to himself in that which he felt to be greatest 
within him, "I could lick 'em with my little finger ! " — 
as the chancellor of the exchequer and the prime-minis- 
ter. Little recked he of their uses or abuses. The 
functions of government were to him Asian mysteries. 
He only felt that it ought to have a strong arm, like the 
brawny member wherewith he preserved order in his 
domestic kingdom ; and therefore generally associated 
government with the police. In his view, these were 
to clear away evil-doers, and leave every one else alone. 
The higher objects of government were, if at all, out- 
lined in the shadowiest form in his imagination. Gov- 
ernment imposed taxes : that he was obliged to know. 
Government maintained the parks : for that he thanked 
it. Government made laws ; but what they were, or 
with what aim or effects made, he knew not, save only 
that by them something was done to raise or depress the 
pric«s of bread, tea, sugar, and other necessaries. Why 
they should do so, he never conceived : I am not sure 
that he cared. Legislation sometimes pinched him ; but 
darkness so hid from him the persons and objects of the 
legislators, that he could not criticise the theories which 
those powerful beings were subjecting to experiment at 
his cost. I must, at any risk, say something about this 
in a separate chapter. 



A DIGRESSION. 21 



rv. — Digressive, and mat be skipped without aioTiLATiNd 
the History. 

I stop here to address any of the following characters, 
should he perchance read these memoirs : — 
You, Mr;. Statesman, — if there be such ; 

Mr. Pseudo - Statesman, Placeman, Party - Leader, 
Wire-Puller ; 

Mr. Amateur Statesman, Dilettante Lord, Civil 

' Servant ; 

Mr. Clubman, Litterateui", Newspaper Scribe ; 

Mr. People's Candidate, Demagogue, Fenian 
Spouter, — 
or whoever you may be, professing to know aught or do 
any thing in matters of policy, consider, what I am sure 
you have never fairly weighed, the condition of a man 
whose clearest notion of -government is derived from the 
police. Imagine one, who had never seen a polype, trying 
to construct an ideal of the animal from a single tentacle 
swinging out from the tangle of weed in which the rest 
was wrapped ! How, then, any more can you fancy that 
a man, to whose sight and knowledge the only part of 
government practically exposed is the strong process of 
police, shall form a proper conception of the functions, 
reasons, operations, and relations of government, or 
even build up an ideal of any thing but a haughty, un- 
reasonable, antagonistic, tax-imposing Force ? And 
how can you rule such a being except as you rule a dog, 
by that which alone he understands, — the do^-whip of 
the constable? Given in a country a majority of crea- 
tures like these, and surely despotism is its properest 
complement. But when they exist, as they exist in 



22 GINX'S BABY. 

England to-day, in hundreds of thousands, in town and 
country, think what a complication they introduce into 
your theoretic free system of government. Acts of 
Parliament passed by a " freely-elected " House of Com- 
mons and an hereditary House of Lords, under the 
threats of freely-electing citizens, however pure in inten- 
tion and correct in principle, will not seem to him to be 
the resultants of every wish in the community so much 
as dictations by superior strength. To these the obedi- 
ence he will render will not be the loving assent of his 
heart, but a begrudged concession to circumstance. 
Your awe-invested legislature is not viewed as his friend 
and bi'other-helper, but his tyrant. Therefore the most 
natural bent of his workman-statesmanship — a rough, 
bungling affair — will be to tame you, — you who ought 
to be his counsellor and friend. When he finds that 
your legislative action exerts upon him a repressive and 
restraining force, he will curse you as its author, because 
he sees not the springs you are working. Should he 
even be a little more advanced in knowledge than our 
friend Ginx, and learn that he helps to elect the Parlia- 
ment to make laws on behalf of himself and his fellow- 
citizens, he will scarce trust the assembly which is 
supposed to represent him. Will he, like a good citizen 
and a politic, accept with dignity and self-control the 
decision of a majority against his prejudices ? or will he 
not regard the whole Wittenagemote with suspicion, con- 
tempt, or even hatred ? See him rush madly to Trafal- 
gar-square meetings, Hyde-park demonstrations, perhaps 
to Lord George Gordon riots, as if there were no less 
perilous means of publishing his opinions ! There wily 
men may lead his unconscious intellect, and stir his pas* 



A DIGRESSION". 23 

6ions, and direct his forces against his own and his chil- 
dren's good. 

Did it ever occur to you, or any of you, how many 
voters cannot read, and how many more, though they 
can read, are unable to apprehend reasons of statesman- 
ship ? that even newspapers cannot inform them, since, 
tbey have not the elementary knowledge needed for the 
compi-ehension of those things which are discussed in 
them ? nay, that, for want of understanding the same, 
thejanay terribly distort political aims and consequences? 

Might it not be worth while for you, gentlemen, may 
it not be your duty, to devise ways and means for con- 
veying such elementary instruction by good street- 
preachers on politics and economy, or even political 
Bible-women or colporters, and so to make clear to the 
understanding of every voter what are the reasons and 
aims of every act of legislation, home administration, 
and foreign policy ? If you do not find out some way to 
do this, he may turn round upon you, — I hope he may, 
— and insist on annually-elected parliaments, and thus 
oblige ambitious State-mongers, in the rivalry of place, 
to come to him and declare more often their wishes and 
objects. Other attractions may be found in that solu- 
tion ; such as the untying of some knots of electoral 
difficulty, and removing incitements to corruption. Ten 
thousand pounds for one year's power were a high price, 
even to a contractor. Think, then, whether, at any cost, 
some general political education must not be attempted, 
since tbere is a spirit breathing on the waters ; and how 
it shall convulse them is no indifferent matter to you or 
•to me. Everywhere around us are unhewn rocks stirred 
with a strange motion. Leave these chaotic fragments 



24 GINX'S BABY. 

of humanity to be hewn into rough shape by coarse 
artists seeking only a petty profit, unhandy, immeasura- 
bly impudent ; or dress them by your teaching — teach- 
ing which is the highest, noblest, purest, most efficient 
function of government, which ought to be the most lofty 
ambition of statesmanship — to be civic corner-stones, 
polished after the similitude of a palace. 



V. — Reasons and Resolves. 
Ginx has been waiting through three chapters to 
explain his truculence upon the birth of his twelfth 
child. Much explanation is not necessary. When he 
looked round his nest and saw the many open mouths 
about him, he might well be appalled to have another 
added to them. His children were not chameleons : yet 
they were already forced to be content with a proportion 
of air for their food ; and even the air was bad. They 
were pallid and pinched. How they were clad will ever 
be a mystery, save to the poor woman who strung the 
limp rags together, and Him who watched the noble pa- 
tience and sacrifice of a daily heroism. Of her own 
unsatisfied cravings, and the dense motherly horrors 
that sometimes brooded over her while she nursed these 
infants, let me refrain from' speaking ; since, if as vividly 
depicted as they were real, you, madam, could not endure 
to read of them. Her poor, unintelligent mind clung 
tenaciously to the controverted aphorism, " Where God 
sends mouths, he sends food to fill them." Believing 
that there was a God, and that he must be kind, she 
trusted in this as a truth : and perhaps an all-seeing Eye, 
reading some quaint characters on her simple heart, 



LAW AND NECESSITY. 25 

viewed them not too nearly, but had regard to their gen- 
eral import ; for, as she expressed it, " Thank God ! they 
had always been able to get along." 

In - the rush and tumult of the world, it is likely that 
the summum bonum of nine-tenths of mankind is em- 
braced in that purely negative happiness, — to get along ; 
not to perish ; to open eyes, however wearily, on a new 
morning ; to satisfy with something, no matter what, a 
craving appetite ; to close eyes at night under some 
shadew or shelter; or, it may be, in certain ranks to 
walk another day free from bankruptcy or arrest. Thank 
Heaven ! they ai*e just able to get along. 

Convinced that another infant straw would break his 
back, Ginx calmly proposed to disconcert physical, moral, 
and legal relations by drowning the straw. Mrs. Ginx, 
clinging to Number Twelve, listened aghast. If a mother 
can forget her sucking child, she was not that mother. 
The stream of her affections, though divided into twelve 
rills, would not have been exhausted in twenty-four; 
and her soul, forecasting its sorrow, yearned after that 
nonentity, Number Thirteen. She pictured to herself 
the hapless strangeling borne away from her bosom by 
those strong arms; and, in fact, she sobbed so, that Ginx 
grew ashamed, and sought to comfort her by the sugges- 
tior that she could not have any more. But she knew 
better. 



VI. — The Antagonism of Law and Necessity. 

In eighteen months, notwithstanding resolves, men- 
aces, and prophecies, Ginx's Baby was born. The 
mother hid the impending event long from the father. 



26 GINX'S BABY. 

When he came to know it, he fixed his determination 
by much thought and a little extra drinking. lie ar- 
gued thus : " He wouldn't go on the parish. He couldn't 
keep another youngster to save his life. He had never 
taken charity, and never would. There was nothink to 
do with it but drown it ! " Female friends of Mrs. 
Ginx bruited his intentions about the neighborhood, so 
that her " time " was watched for with interest. At last 
it came. One afternoon, Ginx, lounging home, saw signs 
of excitement around his door in Rosemary Street. A 
knot of women and children awaited his coming. Pass- 
ing through them, he soon learned what had happened. 
Poor Mrs. Ginx ! Without staying to think or argue, 
he took up the little stranger, and bore it from the 
room 

" Oh, oh, oh ! Ginx ! Ginx ! " 

She would have risen ; but a strong power, called 
weakness, pulled her back. 

The man meanwhile had reached the street. 

" Here he comes ! There's the baby ! He's going to 
do it, sure enough ! " shrieked the women. The children 
stood agape. He stopped to consider. It is very well 
to talk about drowning your baby ; but to do it you need 
two things, — water and opportunity. Vauxhall Bridge 
was the nearest way to the former ; and towards it Ginx 
turned. 

" Stop him ! " 

" Murder ! " 

" Take the child from him ! " 

The crowd grew larger, and impeded the man's prog- 
ress. Some of his fellow-workmen stood by regarding 
the fun. 



LAW AXD NECESSITY. 27 

" Leave us aloan, naabors ! " shouted Ginx : " this is my 
own baby, and I'll do wot I likes with it. I kent keep 
it ; an,' if I've got any thin' I kent keep, it's best to get 
rid of it, ain't it ? This child's goin' over Wauxhall 
Bridge." 

But the women clung to his arms and coat-tails. 

" Hallo ! what's all this about ? " said a sharp, strong 
man, well dressed, and in good condition, coming up to 
the crowd, — " another foundling ? Confound the place ! 
the Very stones produce babies I Where was it found ? " 

Chorus (recognizing a deputy-relieving officer). It 
Warn't found at all : it's Ginx's baby. 

Officer. — Ginx's baby ? Who's Ginx ? 

Ginx. — I am. 

Officer. — Well? 

Ginx. — Well! 

Chorus. — He's goin' to drown it. 

Officer. — Going to drown it ? Nonsense ! 

Ginx. — I am. 

Officer. — But, bless my heart, that's murder ! 

Ginx. — No 'tain't. I've twelve already at home. 
Starvashon's sure to kill this 'un. Best save it the 
trouble. 

Chorus. — Take it away, Mr. Smug : he'll kill it if 
you don't. 

Officer. — Stuff and nonsense ! Quite contrary to 
law ! Why, man, you're bound to support your child. 
You can't throw it off in that way ; nor on the parish 
neither. Give me your name. I must get a magistrate's 
order. The act of Parliament is as clear as daylight. 
I had a man up under it last week. " Whosoever shall 
unlawfully abandon or expose any child being under the 



28 GINx's BABY. 

age of two years whereby the life of such child shall be 
endangered or the health of such child shall have been 
or shall be likely to be permanently injured (drowning 
comes under that I think) shall be guilty of a misde- 
meanor and being convicted thereof shall be liable at 
the discretion of the court to be kept in penal servi- 
tude for the term of three years or to be imprisoned for 
any term not exceeding two years with or without hard 
labor." 

Mr. Smug the officer rolled out this section in a sono- 
rous monotone, without stops, like a clerk of the court. 
It was his pride to know by heart all the acts relating to 
his department, and to bring them down upon any obsti- 
nate head that he wished to crush. Ginx's head, how- 
ever, was impervious to an act of Parliament. In his 
then temper, the commination-service or St. Ernulphus's 
curse would have been feathers to him. The only feel- 
ing aroused in his mind by the words of the legislature 
was one of resentment. To him they seemed unjust be- 
cause they were hard and fast, and made no allowance 
for circumstances. So he said, — 

Ginx. — D the act of Parliament ! What's the 

use of saying I sha'ii't abandon the child, when I can't 
keep it alive ? 

Officer. — But you're bound by law to keep it 
alive 

Ginx. — Bound to keep it alive ? How am I to do 
it ? There's the rest on 'em there (nodding towards his 
house) little better nor alive now. If that's an act of 
Parleyment, why don't the act of Parleyment provide for 
'em ? You know what wages is ; and I can't get more 
than is going. 



MALTHUS AND MAN. 29 

Chorus. — Yes. Why don't Parleyinent provide for 
'em ? You take the child, Mr. Smug. 

Officer (regardless of grammar). — Me take the 
child ! The parish has enough to do to take care of 
foundlings, and children whose parents can't or don't 
work. You don't suppose we will look after the children 
of those who can ? 

Ginx. — Jest so. You'll bring up bastards and beg- 
gars' pups ; but you won't help an honest man to keep 
his -head above water. This child's head is goin' under 
water anyhow ! And he prepared to bolt, amid fresh 
* screams from the chorus. 



VTI. — Mai/thus and Man. 

Two gentlemen who had been observing the excite- 
ment here came forward. 

First Gentleman. — This is our problem again, 
Mr. Philosopher. 

Mr. Philosopher (to Ginx). — You don't know 
what to do with your infant, my friend ; and you think 
the State ought to provide for it ? I understand you to 
say this is your thirteenth child. How came you to have 
so many ? 

This question, though put with profound and even 
melancholy gravity, disconcerted Ginx, Officer, and Cho- 
rus, who united in a hearty outburst of laughter. 

Ginx. — Haw. haw, haw ! How came I to have so 
many? Why, my old woman's a good 'un, and — 

In fact, after searching his mind for some clever way 



30 GINX'S BABY. 

of putting a comical rejoinder, Ginx laughed boisterous- 
ly. There are two aspects of a question. 

Philosopher. — I am serious, my friend. Did it never 
occur to you that you had no right to bring children into 
the world unless you could feed and clothe and educate 
them ? 

Chorus. — Laws a' mercy ! 

Ginx. — I'd like to know how I could help it, naabor. 
I'm a married man. 

Philosopher. — Well, I will go further, and say you 
ought not to have married without a fair prospect of 
being able to provide for any contingent increase of 
family. 

Chorus. — Laws a' mercy ! 

Philosopher (_waxing warm). What right had you 
to marry a poor woman, and then both of you, with as 
little forethought as two — a — dogs, or other brutes — 
to produce between you such a multitudinous progeny ? — 

Ginx. — Civil words, naabor. Don't call my family 
hard names. 

Philosopher. — Then let me say such a monstrous 
number of children as thirteen ? You knew, as you 
said just now, that wages were wages, and did not vary 
much ; and yet you have gone on subdividing your 
resources by the increase of what must become a degen- 
erate offspring. (To the Chorus.') All you workpeople 
are doing it. Is it not time to think about these things, 
and stop the indiscriminate production of human beings 
whose lives you cannot properly maintain ? Ought you 
not to act more like rellective creatures, and less like 
brutes ? As if breeding were the whole object of life ! 
How much better for you, my friend, if you had never 



MALTHUS AND MAN. 31 

married at all, than to have had the worry of a wife and 
children all these years ! 

The philosopher had gone too far. There were some 
angry murmurs among the women ; and Ginx's face grew 
dark. He was thinking of " all those years," and the 
poor creature that from morning to night, and Sunday 
to Sunday, in calm and storm, had clung to his rough 
affections ; and the bright eyes ; and the winding arms 
so c/ten trellised over his tremendous form ; and the coy 
tricks and laughter that had cheered so many tired 
hours. He may have been much of a brute ; but he felt, 
that, after all, that sort of thing was denied to dogs and 
pigs. Before he could translate his thoughts into words 
or acts, a shrewd-looking, curly-haired stonemason, who 
stood by with his tin on his arm, cut into the discussion. 

Stonemason. — Your doctrines won't go down here, 
Mr. Philosopher. I've 'eard of them before. I'd'just 
like to ask you what a man's to do, and what a woman's 
to do, if they don't marry ; and, if they do, how can you 
honestly hinder them from having any children ? 

The stonemason had rudely struck out the cardinal 
issues of the question. 

Philosopher. — Well, to take the last point first, 
there are physical and ethical questions involved in it 
which it is hard to discuss before such an audience as 
this. 

Stonemason. — But you must discuss 'em, if you 
wish us to change our ways and stop breeding. 

Philosopher. — Very well: perhaps you are right- 
But, again, I should first have to establish a basis for 
my arguments by showing that the conception of mar- 
riage entertained by you all is a low one. It is not 



32 GINx's BABY. 

simply a breeding matter. The beauty and value of the 
relation lies in its educational effects, — the cultivation 
of mutual sentiments and refinements of great impor- 
tance to a community. 

Stonemason. — Ay ! Very beautiful and refining to 
Mr. and Mrs. Philosopher ; but I'd like to know where 
the country would have been if our fathers had held to 
that view of matrimony ? Why, ain't it in natur' for all 
beings to pair, and have young ? an' you say we ain't to 
do it ! I think a statesman ought to make something 
out of what's nateral to human beings, and not try to 
change their naturs. Besides, ain't there good of an- 
other kind to be got out of the relation of parents and 
cbildren ? Did you ever have a child yourself? 

Ginx {contemplating the philosopher's physique). He 
have a youngster ! He couldn't. 

Chorus. — Ha, ha, ha ! 

Stonemason. — I don't believe in yer humbuggin' 
notions. They lead to lust and crime : I'm told they do 
in France. If you yourself haven't the human natur in 
you to know it, I'll tell you, and we can all tell you, that, as 
a rule, if the healthy desires of natur ain't satisfied in a 
honest way, they will be in another. You can't stop 
eating by passin' an act of Parleyment to stop it ; and, 
as for yer eddication and cultivation, that makes no 
difference. We know something here about yer eddi- 
cated men, — more than they think. Who is it we meet 
about the streets late at night goin' to the gay houses ? 
Some of 'em stand near as high as you ; but that don't 
alter their natur. They have their passions like other 
men; and eddication don't keep 'em down. Well, if 
that's the case, how can you ask people of our sort to 



THE BABY'S FIRST TRANSLATION". 33 

put on the curb, or make us do it ? Are we to live more 
like beasts than we are now, or do what's worse than 
murder ? I don't see no other way. Among us, I tell 
you, sir, three-fourths of our eddication is eddication of 
the heart. We have to learn to be human, kiud, self- 
denyin' : and I think this makes better men, as a rule, 
than head-larnin ; though I don't despise that, neither. 
But you don't suppose head-citizens would fight for their 
country like meu with wives and children behind 'em? 
Why; they don't even at home work for daily food like 
a man with wife and babies to provide for. 
' The stonemason was above his class, — one of those 
shrewd men that " the people called Methodists " get 
hold of, and use among the lower orders under the name 
of " local preachers ; " men who learn to think and 
speak better than their fellows. The philosopher testi- 
fied some admiration by listening attentively, and was 
about to reply ; but the chorus was tired, and the women 
would not hear him. 

Chorus. — Best get out o' this. We don't want any 
o' yer filhosophy. Go and get childer' of yer own, &c. 

The philosopher and his friend departed, carrying 
with them unsolved the problem they had brought. 



Vm. — The Baby's First Translation. 

The stonemason had been the hero of the moment : 
now attention centred on our own hero. Ginx hurried 
oil again ; but, as the crowd opened before him, he was 
met, and his mad career stayed, by a slight figure, femi- 
nine, draped in black to the feet, wearing a curiously- 
3 



34 GINX'S BABY. 

framed white-winged hood ahove her pale face, and a 
large cross suspended from her girdle. He could not 
run her down. 

Nun. — Stop, man ! Are you mad ? Give me the 
child. 

He placed the little bundle in her arms. She uncov- 
ered the queer ruby face, and kissed it. Ginx had not 
looked at the face before ; but after seeing it, and the 
act of this woman, he could not have touched a hair of 
his child's head. His purpose died from that moment, 
though his perplexity was still alive. 

Nun. — Let me have it. I will take it to the Sisters' 
Home, and it shall live there. Your wife may come and 
nurse it. We will take charge of it. 

Ginx. — And you won't send it back again ? You'll 
take it for good and all ? 

Nun. — Oh, yes ! 

Ginx. — Good ! Give us yer hand. 

A little white hand came out from under her burthen, 
and was at once half crushed in Ginx's elephantine 
grasp. 

Ginx. -—Done. Thank'ee, missus. Come, mates, I'll 
stand a drink. 

A few minutes after, the woman of the cross, who had 
been up to comfort the poor mother, fluttered with her 
white wings down Rosemary Street, carrying in her 
arms Ginx's Baby. 



PART II. 

WHAT CHARITY AND THE CHURCHES DID WITH 
HIM. 

I. — The Milk of Human Kindness, Mother's Milk, and tiie 
Milk of the Word. 

T I lIIE early days of his residence at the Home of the 
-*- Sisters of Misery, In Winkle Street, was the Eden 
of Ginx's Baby's existence. Themselves innocent of a 
mother's experiences, the Sisters were free to give play 
to their affections in a novel direction, and to assume a 
sort of spiritual maternity that was lucky for the 
changeling. He was nestled in kind serge-covered arms : 
kisses rained upon him from chaste lips. A slight scan- 
dal thrilled the convent upon the discovery of his sex, 
which had, of course, been a pure mutter of conjecture 
to Sister Pudicitia when she rescued him ; but enthusi- 
asm can overcome any thing. The awkward questions 
foreshadowed in the discovery were left to be considered 
when their growing importance should demand upon 
them the judgment of the archbishop. Visions of an 
unusual sanctity to be fostered in the pure regions of the 
convent, and to be sent on a mission into the world to 
attest the power of their spiritual discipline, began to 

35 



36 GINX's BABY. 

haunt the brains of the sequestered nuns. Might not 
this infant be an embryo saint, destined for a great work 
in the heretical wilderness out of which he had come ? 
How little healthy food the brains must have had where- 
in these insane dreams were excited by our innocent 
baby ! Hardly did the sacred spinsters forecast what 
was in store for them when he should be teething. 

But Ginx's Baby was in a religious atmosphere, and 
that is always surcharged with electricity. His lot 
must have been above that of any other human being 
if he could long have remained in such a climate un- 
visited by thunder. The mother had been permitted to 
attend at the Home with the same regularity as the 
milkman, to discharge her maternal duties. Then, with 
the rise of the visionary projects just mentioned, the 
gravest doubts began to agitate the fertile and casuistic 
mind of the lady-superior. The holier her ideal St.. 
Ginx of the future, the more to be deplored was any 
heretical taint in the present. Holy Mother ! Was it 
not perhaps eminently perilous to his spiritual purity 
that an unbeliever like Mrs. Ginx should bring uncon- 
secrated milk into the convent to be administered to this 
suckling of the Church ! In her uneasiness, she appealed 
to Father Certiiicalus, the conventual confessor. He 
gave his opinion in the following letter : - — 

"Dear Sister Suspiciosa, — The very grave ques- 
tion yoa have put to me has given me much anxiety. It 
could not but do so, since it occupied, I knew, so fully 
your own holy rellections. I pondered it during the 
night while I repeated one hundred Aves on my knees ; 
and I think the Blessed Virgin has vouchsafed h«r as- 
sistance. 



MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS, ETC. 37 

" T understood you to say you thought that the phys- 
ical health of the infant, so singularly and miraculously 
thrown upon your care, required the offices of his 
heretic mother, and yet that you felt how inconsistent 
it was, with the noble future we contemplate for him, 
that he should receive unorthodox lacteal sustentation. 
In this you are but following the usage of the Church 
in all ages ; for she has ever enjoined the advantage of 
infusing her doctrines into her children with the mother's 
uiillc. 

" Three courses only appear to me to be open to us. 
"First, we may try to work upon the mother's feelings, 
and, on behalf of her child, induce her to avail herself 
of the inestimable privileges of the Church in which 
he is fostered. Secondly, should she repel us, — and 
these lower-class heretics are even brutally refractory, 
— we might at least allure her to allow us to make with 
holy water the sign of the cross upon the natural reser- 
voirs of infant nourishment each time before she ap- 
proaches the infant. This, besides overcoming the 
immediate difficulty, and securing for the child a supply 
of sanctified food, might, open the way for the entrance 
into her own bosom of the milk of the Word. Thirdly, 
should she reject these proposals, I see nothing for it 
but to forbid her to have access to her infant, and, com- 
mending him to the care of the Holy Mother, to feed 
him with pap or other suitable nourishment previously 
consecrated by me in its crude state, and prepared by 
the most holy hands of your community. Thus we may 
hope to shield the young soul in its present freshness 
from contact with carnal elements. 

" Your loving father in, &c, 

" Certificatus." 



38 GINX's BABY. 

On receiving this letter, the superioress conferred not 
with flesh and blood, but sent for Mrs. Ginx. That 
worthy woman was not enchanted with her child's 
position. I havediinted that her faith was simple: but, 
in proportion to its simplicity, it was strongly rooted 
in her nature. 'Tis not infrequent to find it so. 
Lengthy creeds, and confessions of faith, are apt to ex- 
tend the strength and fervor of belief over too wide a 
surface : in the close frame of some single article will 
be concentrated the whole energy of the soul. The 
first formula, " Repent, and believe in the Lord Jesus 
Christ," was maintained Avith a heat that became less 
intense, though more distributed, in the insertion of an 
Athanasian Creed. Mrs. Ginx's creed was succinct. 

Mrs. Ginx's Primary Creed. 

I believe in God, giver of bread, meat, money, and 
health. 

This she maintained with indifferent ritual and devo- 
tional observances. But there was to Mrs. Ginx's faith 
a corollary or secondary creed, only needed to meet 
special emergencies. 

Mrs. Ginx's Secondary Creed. 

1. I believe in the Church of England. 

2. I believe in heaven and hell. 

3. (A negative article) I hate Popery, priests, and 

the Devil. 

When her husband made his fatal gift to the nun, 



MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS, ETC. 39 

this third article of his wife's belief, or unbelief, stirred 
up, and waxed aggressive. 

Said the lady-superior, "My good woman, your 
child thrives under the care of Holy Mother Church." 

" Yes'in, he thrives well," replies Mrs. Ginx, repeat- 
ing no more of Sister Suspiciosa's sentence ; " an' I've 
'ad more milk than ever for the darlin' this time, thank 
God ! " 

" And the Holy Virgin." 

" I dunno about her," cries Mrs. Ginx emphatically, 
perhaps not seeing congruity between a virgin and the 
subject of thankfulness. 

" And the Holy Virgin," repeated the nun, " who in- 
terests herself in all mothers* She bas thus blessed you, 
that your cliild may be made strong for the work of the 
Church. Do you not s6e a miracle is worked within you 
to prove her goodness ? - This, no doubt, is an evidence 
to you of her Avish to bless you, and take you for ber 
own. I beseech you, listen to her voice, and come and 
enter her fold." 

" If you mean the Virgin Mary, mum, I ain't a idola- 
ter, beggin' yer parding,'' says Mrs. Ginx. " An' tho' I 
wouldn't for the world offend them as has been so kind 
to my child, an' saved it from that deer little creetur 
bein' tbrown over Wauxhall Bridge, — an' Ginx ought 
to be ashamed of hisself, so he ought, — I ain't Papish, 
mum ; and I ain't dispoged, with twelve on 'em there at 
home, all Protestant to the back-bone, to turn Papish 
now : an' so I 'ope an' pray, mum," says Mrs. Ginx, roar- 
ing and crying, " you ain't agoin' to make Papish of my 
flesh an' blood. Oh, dear ! oh, dear I " 

The lady-superior shut her ears : she had raised a 
familiar spirit, and could not lay it. She temporized. 



40 GINX'S BABY. 

" You know your husband has given the child to us. 
It will be called the infant Ambrosius." 

" D>ar, dear ! " sighed Mrs. Ginx : " what a name ! " 

" We wish hira to be kept from any worldly taint ; 
and by and by his saintliness may gain you forgiveness 
in spite of your heretical perversity. I cannot permit 
you to gi e him unconsecrated milk ; and, as we wish to 
treat you kindly, the holy Father Certificatus has al- 
lowed me to make an arrangement with you, to which 
you can have no objection, — I mean, that you should let 
me make the sign of the cross upon your breasts, morn- 
ing and evening, before you suckle your infant. You 
will permit me to do that, won't you ? " 

Conceive of Mrs. Ginx's reply, clothed in choice West- 
minster English ! It asserted her readiness to cut off her 
right hand, her feet, to be hanged, drowned, burned, 
torn to pieces, in fact to withstand all the torments as- 
cribed by vulgar tradition to Koman-Catholic ingenuity, 
and to see her baby " a dead corpse" into the bargain, 
before she would submit her Protestant bosom to such 
an indignity. 

" l$o, mum 1 " she said : " I couldn't sleep with that on 
my breast ; " and cried hysterically. 

This lower-class heretic was " brutally refractory." 
So thought the superioress, and so gave Mrs. Ginx no- 
tice to come no more. She went home rather jubilant : 
she was a martyr. 



DETECTORAL ASSOCIATION. 41 



n. — The Protestant Detectoral Association. 

Ginx's Baby was now fed on consecrated pap. But 
his mother was not a woman to be silent under hei 
wrongs. From her husband she hid them, because the 
subject was forbidden. She poured out her complaint 
to Mrs. Spittal and other Protestant matrons. Thus it 
came to pass, that one day, in Ginx's absence, the good 
woman was surprised by a visit from a " gentleman." 
He was small, sharp, rapid, dressed in black. He opened 
his business at once. 

" Mrs. Ginx ? Ah ! I am the agent of the Protestant 
Detectoral Association." 

Mrs. Ginx wiped her best chair, and set it for him. 

" By great good fortune, the secretary received only 
half an hour ago intelligence of the shocking instance 
of Papal aggression of" which you have been the vic- 
tim." 

To hear her case put so grandly was honey to Mrs. 
Ginx. 

" Well, now," continued the little man, " we are 
ready to render you every assistance to save your child 
from the claws of the Great Dragon. I wish to know 
the exact circumstances. Let me see (opening a large 
pocket-book), 1 have this memorandum : The child teas 
carried off from his mother's bedside in broad daylight by 
a nun, accompanied by two priests and a large body of 
Irish : is that a correct version ? " 

" Law, no, sir ! it warn't quite like that," said Mrs. 
Ginx. " We've 'ad so many on 'em, that Ginx was for 
drownin' the thirteenth," — the little man opened his 
eyes, — 



42 GINX'S BABT. 

" An' he went and gave it away, sir," said she, crying, 
" to a nun, sir, — ah, ah, ah ! They won't let me see 
the darlin' now, sir, — ah, ah, ah ! because I won't let 
Missis Spishyosir mark me with the cross, sir; an' me 
with as fine a breast o' milk as ever was for 'im, sir, — 
ah, ah, ah ! " 

" Hem ! " said the little man : " that's different from 
what I understood." 

He was quite honest ; but who does not know how 
disappointing it is to find a wrong you wish to redress is 
not so bad as you had hoped ? 

However, it looked bad enough, and might be made 
worse. It was the very case for the Protestant Detecto- 
ral Association. 

" Would Mr. Ginx not join in an effort to recover his 
child?" 

" No, sir : I should think not. He went an' gave it 
away." 

" I know ; but he is a Protestant ? " 

" I don't think he be much o' any thing, sir. I know 
he hate priests like pison ; but he don't care about these 
things as I do." 

" Oh ! I see." Writes in his memorandum-book, — 
Husband indifferent. 

"But don't you think he would help you- to get the 
child back again ? " 

" No, sir ! I wouldn't speak of it to him for the world. 
He'd knock any one down if they was to mention the 
child to him." 

The little man mentally determined not to see Ginx. 

" Well : would you like to have your child back ? " 

" You see, I couldn't bring it 'ere, sir. Ginx won't 



THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM. 43 

•avc it ; but I'd like to see it took away from them nun- 
neries." 

" Ha ! very well, then. We can perhaps manage it 
for you. You would be content to hand it over to some 
Protestant Home, where it would be taken care of, and 
you could see it when you liked ? " 

" Oh, yes, sir ! " cries Mrs. Ginx, brightening. 

" Then we'll have an affidavit, and apply for a habeas 
corpus." 

If was impossible not to be satisfied with such words 
as these, whatever they meant ; and Mrs. Ginx was 
'cheered, while the little man went on his way. 



III. — The Sacrament of Baptism. 

Mother, or " Mrs." Suspiciosa, fed Ginx's Baby 
tvith holy pap. It seemed proper, now, that he should 
oe christened, and formally received into the Church. 
No small stir was made by this ceremony, for which all 
the resources of the convent were called into action. 
The day selected was that sacred to St. Ambrosius. The 
chapel was decorated with flowers ; mass was celebrated ; 
candles flamed upon the altar surrounding a figure of 
the infant Jesus ; incense' was burning around the baby ; 
sisters and novices knelt in serried rows of virginity 

" Like doves 
Sunning their milky bosoms on the thatch." 

Mother Suspiciosa carried the infant clothed in a pure 
white robe with a red cross embroidered on its front. 



44 GINX'S BABY. 

In the absence of the natural parent, a wax figure of 
St. Ambrosius did duty for him, and another wax figure 
stood godfather. But I dare not enter into details of 
matters that may be looked at as awfully profane or 
awfully solemn by different spectators. These things 
are a mystery. 

I have no hesitation about describing the impious be- 
havior of little Ginx. Whatever swaddled infant could 
do in the way of opposition, with hands and legs and 
voice, was done by that embryo saint. The incense 
made him cough and sputter : the lights and singing 
raised the very devil within him. His cries drowned 
the prayers. He frightened his conductress by the red- 
ness of his face. Pie ruined the red cross with ejected 
matter. You would have taken him for an infant de- 
moniac. Mother Suspiciosa, though annoyed, was en- 
couraged. She looked upon this as an evident testimony 
to little Ginx's value. The Devil and St. Michael were 
contending for his body. At length he was baptized, 
and carried out. Credat Juikens. lie instantly sank 
into a deep sleep. It was a miracle : Satan had yielded 
to the siirn of the ci'oss 1 



IV.— Law on Behalf of GosrEi.. 

In the moment of Sister Suspiciosa's triumph, the 
enemy was laying his train against her. The little man 
made his report to the secretary of the Protestant De- 
tectoral Association. This gentleman was well born and 
well bred ; moved to work in this " cause " by an honest 
hatred of superstition, priestcraft, and lies ; now giving 



LAW ON BEHALF OF GOSPEL. 45 

all Lis energies to tlic ambitious design of pulling down 
the strongholds of Satan. In any other matter, he could 
act coolly and with deliberation : in this he was an en- 
thusiast. He had a keen Roman nose. He could scent 
a priest anywhere in the United Kingdom. He could 
smell Jesuitry in the queen's drawing-room, a cabinet 
council or convocation, though he had never been at 
either. His eye was beyond a falcon's : he saw things 
that were invisible. It penetrated through all disguises. 
He knew a secret emissary of the pope by the cock of 
his hat or the color of his stockings ; at least, he 
thought so : and thousands of persons acted on his esti- 
mate of himself. 

" This case," said he to the little man when he had 
concluded his report, " though not in its first incidents 
so grave as we were led to expect, is, in another point 
of view, very serious. Here is a man, as you have* ex- 
pressed it, 'indifferent' to his child's life, animal and 
spiritual. The mother, with a true Protestant heart 
and a fine breast of milk, is longing to nurture her child, 
and to deliver it from the toils of the Papacy. But the 
husband, what's his name ? . . . Ginx, Ginx ? a very 
bad name for a case, by the way, — Ginx's Case ! — this 
Ginx has given up his child to the Sisters of Misery. 
How are we to get it away again without his co-opera- 
lion ? . . . Well, we must try." 

The solicitor of the association was forthwith sum- 
moned. Whtm the matter had been laid before him, he 
expressed doubts, offered and withdrew courses of action, 
and ended by suggesting that he should take the opinion 
of counsel. 

" Mr. Stigma, I suppose ? " said he to the secretary. 



46 GINX'S BABY. 

" Oh, yes ! Sir Adolphus Stigma is one of our principal 
supporters ; and bis son's heart is thoroughly with us." 

Messrs. Roundhead, Roundhead and Lollard, drew up 
a case to be submitted to Mr. Stigma. I will only tran- 
scribe the latter paragraphs : — 

" Mr. Ginx being indifferent, and Mrs. Ginx being 
read;) to assist in regaining the custody of her child, to be 
convened to a Protestant Home, — 

"You are Requested to Advise, — 

"1. Whether a summons should be taken out before a 
magistrate against the lady-superior of the concent 
for enticing away or detaining the infant under 
the 56th sect, of 24 and 25 Vict., c. 100 ; or, — 

" 2. Whether the proper remedy is by a writ of habeas 
corpus? and, if so, whether it is necessary that the 
father should be joined in the proceedings, or his 
leave obtained to prosecute them ; or, failing these, — 

"3. Whether counsel is of opinion that this is a case 
within Talfourd 's Act, and an application might not 
be made to the Lord Chancellor, or the Master of 
the Rolls, on the mother's behalf, for the custody of 
her child ; and, — 

" 4. To advise generally on behalf of the infant." 

Mr. Adolphus Stigma took ten days to consider. 
Meanwhile, the infant Ambrosius continued to thrive on 
conventual pap. Then Mr. Stigma wrote his opinion. 
It was a model for a barrister. You took the advice at" 
your own peril, not his : therefore I transcribe it. 



LAW ON BEHALF OF GOSPEL. 47 

" Opinion. 
" I have given to this case my most careful attention ; 
and it is one of great difficulty. Having regard to the 
questions put to me, I think, — 

" 1. Section 56 of the Act of 24 and 25 Vict,, c. 100, 
appears at first sight to be directed against the stealing 
and abduction of children for marriage, or other improper 
purposes. It provides, that ' whosoever shall unlawful!'/, 
either by force or fraud, lead or take away or decoy or 
entice away or detain any child, &c, Avith intent to 
deprive any parent, &c, of the possession of such child,' 
' shall be guilty of felony. It is perfectly clear, that, 
in the case before me, the infant was not, ' by force or 
fraud, led or taken away or decoyed or enticed away.' 
The statute, however, uses the word ' detain ; ' and this, 
it appears to me, has much the same force and intention 
as the previous words. " It is to be noted, however, that 
it is separated from them by the disjunctive ' or ; ' and 
therefore it might be argued, with some plausibility, that 
any act of forceful or fraudulent detention, after notice, 
by persons who have originally acquired a child's custody 
in a lawful way, came within the section. The point is 
new, and of great importance ; and, if the Protestant 
Dctectoral Association feel disposed to try it, they 
would do so under favorable circumstances in the present 
case. Should they decide to do so, a written demand 
should be served upon the authorities of the convent by 
the mother, or some one acting on her behalf, to give up 
the infant. 

" 2. The second question is also involved in difficulty. 
Were the father to be joined in the proceedings, the 
writ of habeas corpus would be the correct remedy. 



48 GINX'S BABY. 

But his probable refusal necessitates the inquiry, whether 
the mother can alone apply for the writ. The general 
rule of law is, that the father is entitled to the custody 
and disposition of his children. In Cartlidge and Cart- 
lidge, 31 L. J., P. M. & D. 85, it was held that this rule 
would not be generally departed from by the Divorce 
Court ; but in Barnes v. Barnes, L. 11. 1, P. & D. 4G3, 
the Court made an order, giving the custody of two 
infant children to the mother, respondent in a suit for a 
dissolution of marriage, on the ground that the mother's 
health was suffering from being deprived of their socie- 
ty, and that they were living with a stranger, and not 
with the father. These cases were, however, in the 
Divorce Court, and do not apply. But as there seems 
to be much ground in the peculiar circumstances here 
for arguing that the mother should have the custody of 
the child, or, at least, that it should not be left to that 
of persons of a different religion from both parents, an 
application might be made to the Queen's Bench to try 
the question. 

" 3. Should the common-law remedies fail, resort may 
perhaps be had to the powers in Chancery under Tal- 
fuurd's Act ; but on this point I should like to confer with 
an equity counsel before giving a decided opinion. It 
has been decided under this act that the Court has 
power to give the custody of children under seven to 
the mother (SMUito v. Collett, 8, W. R. G83-606). As 
this infant is but six weeks old, it comes within that 
case. 

"4. I have no general advice to give on behalf of the 
infant. 

" Adolphus Stigma, 

" 9 Plumtree Court." 



magistrate's law. 49 

If none of the courses suggested by Mr. Stigma was 
very decided, Messrs. Roundhead, Roundhead and Lol- 
lard, were not sorry to have three strings to their bow. 
The Detectoral Association were good clients : most of 
their 'funds went into their lawyers' pockets. It was part 
of their policy to be litigious : thereby the world was 
kept alive to the existence of Papacy within its bosom. 
Who. shall say the association were wrong? Some 
healthy daylight was occasionally let in upon the mys- 
teries of Jesuitism ; and there are people who think that 
worth while at the risk of a chance injustice. Though 
the Devil should not get his due, few would give him 
any sympathy. 

The solicitor at once instructed Mr. Dignam Bailey, 
Q.C., to apply with Mr. Stigma to a magistrate for a 
summons. Mr. Bailey, Q.C., was not chosen for his 
partialities. In religious "matters he was a perfect Gallio : 
but he was like St. Paul in one particular, — he could be 
all things to all men. 



• V. — Magistrate's Law. 

The personnel of the magistrate to whom Mr. Dig- 
nam Bailey, Q. C. (with him Mr. Adolphus Stigma), 
applied in the case of re an infant, ex parte Ginx, is not 
material to this history. He was like his fellow stipen- 
diaries, — mild as to humor, vigilant in his duties, opin- 
ionated in his views, resenting the troublesome intrusion 
into his court of a barrister, apt to treat him with about 
one-eighth of the courtesy extended to the humblest 
junior by the Queen's Bench, and curiously unequal 
4. 



50 cnsrx's baby. 

both with himself and his brother-magistrates in adjust- 
ing punishment. It will be most convenient to insert 
the report of " The Daily Electric Meteor : " — 

" Westminster. 

"Mr. Dignam Bailey, Q. C. (with whom was Mr. 
Adolphus Stigma), applied for a summons against Mary 
Dens, commonly called Sister Suspiciosa, of the convent 
of the Sisters of Misery, in Winkle Street, for abducting 
and detaining a male child of John Ginx, and Mary 
his wife. 

" Mr. D' Acerbity. — On whose behalf do you ap- 

ply? 

" The learned counsel stated that he was instructed 
by the Protestant Detectoral Association to apply on 
behalf of the mother. The case was also watched by 
the solicitors of the Society for preventing the Suppres- 
sion of Women and Children. 

"Mr. D' Acerbity. — Does the father join in the 
application ? 

"Mr. Bailey. — No, sir. 

" Mr. D' Acerbity. — Why ? He ought to be joined, 
if living. 

"Mr. Bailey. — Perhaps you will allow me, sir, to 
state the case. The circumstances are peculiar. The 
fact is — 

" Mr. D'Acerbity. — I cannot understand why the 
father should not be represented if the child has been 
abducted. Where was it taken from ? 

"Mr. Bailey proceeded to state that the child had 
been taken by a nun from No. 5, Rosemary Street, 
without the mother's consent, and was now imprisoned 



magistrate's law. 51 

hi the convent. The father appeared to be indifferent, 
or to have given a sort of general acquiescence. This 
was Mrs. Ginx's thirteenth child, around whom gathered 
the concentrated affections - — 

"Mr. D' Acerbity (interrupting the learned gentle- 
man). We' have no time for sentiment here, Mr. Bai- 
ley. If the father consented, can you call it abduction ? 
It looks like reduction. (Laughter.') 

"Mr. Bailey called attention to the consolidated 
statutes of criminal law, and said he was going for ille- 
gal detention rather than abduction, and argued at great 
length from section fifty-six. At the conclusion of the 
argument, after refusing to hear Mr. Stigma, 

" Mr. D' Acerbity said that the case clearly did not 
come within the section, and he was afraid the learned 
counsel knew it. The father had been a consenting 
party, on the counsel's own statement, to the child's re- 
moval ; and no suggestion had been made that he had 
withdrawn his consent, lie should refuse a summons. 

" Mr. Bailey endeavored to address the magistrate, 
but was stopped. 

"Mr. D'Acerbity. — I have no more to say. You 
can apply to the Queen's Bench. I have no sympathy 
with you whatever." 

Mr. D' Acerbity's law was good ; but what has justice 
to do with " sympathies " ? Surely, the day after this 
report appeared, the magistrate must have had a letter 
from the Home Secretary. 



52 



GINX'S BABY. 



VI. — Popery and Protestantism in the Queen's Bench. 

The application to the magistrate was far from satis* 
factory. There had not even been an exposure ; and 
" The Windmill Bulletin " gayly bantered the Detectoral 
Association. Meanwhile had happened the grand chris- 
tening, of which a circumstantial account was in the 
hands of the council of the Detectoral Association 
shortly after the ceremony had been performed. Here 
was a monstrous indignity to a Protestant child. The 
account was at once printed, together with a verbatim 
report of the application to the magistrate, as well as one 
of a " conversation held with the mother by an agent of 
the association." Board-men paraded the great thor- 
oughfares, carrying this appeal : — 



PROTESTANT DETECTORAL ASSOCIATION. 



NO POPERY! 

Abduction of an Infant ! 

Assault on the Liberty of the Subject! 

Mysterious and Awful Proceedings! 

Baptism of a Protestant Child in a Convent! 

OUTRAGE 

Upon the Nation by Foreign Mercenaries! 



Every Father and Mother is invited to co-operate in 

Maintaining the 

PROTESTANT RELIGION, 

The Sanctity of Home, and the Inviolability of 

BRITISH FREEDOM! 



NO SURRENDER! 



POPERY AND PROTESTANTISM. 53 

If there was no coherency in this production, it should 
be noted how little that is of the essence of popular ap- 
peal. The metropolis was in an uproar. Meetings were 
held ; subscriptions poured in ; dangerous crowds col- 
lected in Winkle Street. When Mr. Dignain Bailey, 
Q.C., went down to Westminster to move the Court of 
Queen's Bench, multitudes besieged it. Protestant cham- 
pions and Papal ecclesiastics vied in their efforts to get 
seats. The writ had gone from judge's chambers, re- 
turnable to the full court. Sister Suspiciosa, bearing 
the infant Ambrosius, and supported by two novices 
and Father Certificatus, had been smuggled into court 
through mysterious passages in its rear- Mrs. Ginx also, 
brought from Rosemary Street by the little man, who 
provided her with a bonnet trimmed with orange-colored 
ribbons, sat staring with red eyes at her child, now envel- 
oped in a robe. that wasdnhroidered with little crosses. 

Why need I tell you how dead silence fell upon the 
court after the stir caused by the entrance of the judges; 
how everybody knew what was coming when a master 
beneath the bench rose, and called out, "Re Ginx, an 
infant, ex parte Mary Ginx ! " how the chief justice, 
fresh and rosy-looking, then blew his nose in a delicate 
manve-colored silk handkerchief; how he tried and dis- 
carded half a dozen pens amid breathless silence ; how, 
in his blandest manner, he said, " Who appears for the 
respondent ? " and Mr. Dignam Bailey, Q. C, and Mr. 
Octavius Ernestus, Q. C., rose together to say that Mi*. 
Ernestus did ? 

Mr. Ernestus was a Catholic. He was assisted by 
half a dozen counsel, He riddled the affidavits on tho 
other side, and read voluminous ones on his own ; bitterly 



54 GINX'S BABY. 

animadverted upon the absence of an affidavit by the 
father; held up to the scorn of a civilized world the 
course pursued towards his meek and gentle clients by 
the " fanatical zealots of the Protestant Detectoral Asso- 
ciation ; " in moving tones referred to the shrinking of 
"quiet recluses from the gaze of a rude, unsympathizing 
world;" cited cases from the time of Magna Charta 
down ; called upon the Court to vindicate Protestant 
justice; ending his peroration with the aphorism of 
Lord Mansfield, Fiat just ilia, mat caelum! 

One cannot do justice to Mr. Dignam Bailey's argu- 
ment, when, after lunch, he rose to reply. He was 
logical and passionate, vindictive and pathetic, by turns. 
He inveighed against the lady-superior, against her 
attorneys, against Father Certifieatus, against Ginx, — 
" craven to his heaven-born rights of political and reli- 
gious freedom," — against the Roman-Catholic religion, 
the Pope, the Archbishop of Westminster, the Virgin 
Mary. The Court knew, and every one else knew, that 
this was pure pyrotechny ; and Mr. Bailey knew that 
best of all : but though the Bench is swift to speak, 
slow to hear, it felt obliged, in a case of this public inter- 
est, to sit by and be witnesses of the exhibition. Mr. 
Bailey concluded by a play on the aphorism cited by his 
learned friend. He would say, that, if such justice were 
to be done as his friend had urged, the kingdom of 
heaven in England would rush to its fall." 

The Court at once decided, that as the father had con- 
fided the custody of the infant to the Sisters of Misery, 
and did not appear to desire that it should be withdrawn, 
they, disregarding the religious clouds in which the sub- 
ject had been too carefully involved on both sides, gave 
judgment for the defendant, with costs. 



PROTESTER, BUT NOT PROTESTANT. 55 

As they passed out of court, Mr. Stigma said to his 
clients, " Quite as I anticipated : you remember I told 
you so in my opinion." 



VET. — A Protester, but not a Protestant. 

Tiie infant Ambrosius and his conductors could scarce- 
ly reach the convent in safety. The building showed 
few-windows to the street; but they were all broken. 
What might have happened in a few clays, but .that 
'Ginx's Baby took the matter into his own hands, none 
can say. 

The treatment to which the little saint was subjected 
soured his temper. His kind nurses had choked him 
twice a day with incense ; and now he had inhaled for 
seven hours the air of the Queen's Bench, i On his re- 
turn to the convent, he was hastily fed, and carried to 
the chapel to give thanks for the victory of the day. 
Wrapped in a handsome chasuble, they laid him on the 
steps of the altar. In the most solemn part of the ser- 
vice, he coughed and grew sick. The chasuble was be- 
spattered. When the officiating priest, to save that gar- 
ment, took the child in his arms, he nefariously polluted 
the sarcerdotal vestments and the altar-steps. Then he 
kicked toward the altar itself, roared lustily, and finally 
went into convulsions in Sister Suspiciosa's arms. Like 
most women, the lady-superior required her enthusiasm 
to be fed with success. She began to think that she 
had oeen cozened : Ginx's Baby was too evidently a 
spiritual miscarriage. He must, like the rest of his 
family, be indeed " Protestant to the backbone." Father 



56 GINX'S BABY. 

Certificates agreed with her. His robes and best chasu- 
ble were befouled. 

" Let us not risk a repetition of this conduct," said he. 
" Let the child be given up. He is baptized, and cannot 
be severed from the Church. He will return after many 
days." 

Next morning, the solicitors of the Protestant Dctec- 
toral Association received a letter from their opponents. 
In this they said, that, presuming Messrs. Roundhead, 
Roundhead and Lollard, intended to apply to the Mas- 
ter of the Rolls, the authorities of the convent had de- 
cided, after having vindicated themselves in the Queen's 
Bench, to give up the child, which would be for twenty- 
four hours at the order and disposal of the association, 
and afterwards of his parents. " We are instructed by 
our clients," they added, " to ask you to bear in mind 
that the child has been admitted and is a member of 
the Catholic Church, owing allegiance to the Holy 
Father at Rome, — a bond from which only the Papal 
excommunication can absolve him." 



VITI. — "See now these Christians love One Another!" 

A mass-meeting of Protestants had been summoned 
for three o'clock on the day designated in the letter of 
the Papist attorneys, to be held in the Philopragmon 
Hall. That was the favorite centre of countless move- 
ments, both well meant and well executed, and of othera 
as futile as they were foolish. Yet one could not say 
that a larger proportion of the latter were connected 
with the hall than existed in as many other human en- 



LOVING ONE ANOTHER. 57 

terprises of any sort. The concession of the Romanists 
at first dashed the managers of the demonstration. 
Their grievance was gone. Still there remained topics 
for a meeting : they would rejoice over victory, and con- 
sult about the future of the Protestant baby. 

The secretary was an old hand at these meetings. 
He planned to import into this one a sensation. Ginx's 
Baby, brought from the convent, stripped of his Papal 
swathings, and enveloped in a handsome outfit presented 
by an amiable Protestant duchess, was placed in a 
cradle, with his head resting on a Bible. I am afraid 
"he was quite as uncomfortable as he had ever been at 
the convent. When at the conclusion of the chair- 
man's speech, in which he informed the audience of 
their triumph, this exhibition was deftly introduced upon 
the platform, the huzzas and clappings, and waving of 
handkerchiefs, were such as even that place had never 
seen. The child was astounded into quietness. 

Mr. Trumpeter took the chair, believed by many to 
be, next to the queen, the most powerful defender of the 
faith in the three kingdoms. I never could understand 
why the newspapers reported his speeches : I cannot. 

When he had done, Lord Evergood, " a popular, 
practical peer, of sound Protestant principles," as " The 
Daily Banner " alliteratively termed him next morning, 
rose to move the first resolution, already cut and dried 
by the committee : — 

" That the infant so happily rescued from the incubus 
of a delusive superstition should be remitted to the care 
of the Church Widows' and Orphans' Augmentation Soci- 
ety, and should be supported by voluntary contributions." 

Before Lord Evergood could say a word, murmurs 



58 GINX'S BABY. 

arose in every part of the hall. He was a mild, gentle- 
manly Christian, without guile ; and the opposition both 
surprised and frightened him. He uttered a few sen- 
tences in approval of his proposition, and sat down. 

An individual in the gallery shouted, " Sir, I rise to 
move an amendment ! " 

Cheers, and cries of " Order, order ! — sit down ! " &c. 

The chairman, with great blandness, said, — 

" The gentleman is out of order : the resolution has 
not yet been seconded. I call upon the Rev. Mr. Valpy 
to second the resolution." 

Mr. Valpy, incumbent of St. Swithin's-Within, insisted 
on speaking ; but what he said was known only to him- 
self. When he had finished, there was an extraordinary 
commotion. On the platform, many ministers and lay- 
men jumped to their feet; in the hall, at least a hundred 
aspirants for a hearing raised themselves on benches or 
the convenient backs of friends. 

The chairman shouted, " Order, order, gentlemen ! 
This is a great occasion : let us show unanimity ! " 

There seemed to be a unanimous desire to speak. 
Amid cheers, cries for order, and Kentish fire, you could 
hear the Rev. Mark Slowboy, Independent, the Rev. 
Hugh Quickly, Wesleyan, the Rev. Bereciah Calvin, 
Presbyterian, the Rev. Ezckiel Cutwater, Baptist, call- 
ing to the chair. 

A lull ensued, of which advantage was taken by Mr. 
Stentor, a well-known Hyde-park orator, who bellowed 
from a friend's shoulders in the pit, "Mr. Chairman, hear 
me ! " an appeal that was followed by roars of laughter. 

What was the matter? Why, the proposal to hand 
over the baby to an Anglican refuge stirred up the blood 



LOVING ONE ANOTHER. 59 

of every Dissenter present. It was lifting the infant out 
of the frying-pan, and dexterously dropping him into the 
fire. But the chairman was accustomed to these scenes. 
lie stayed the tumult by proposing that a representative 
from each denomination should give his opinion to the 
audience. " Whom would they have first ? " 

The loudest cries were for Mr. Cutwater, who stood 
forth, a weak, stooping, half-halting little man, with a 
limp necktie, and trousers puffy at the knees, but with 
honest use of them, let me say. It is quite credible, that 
if Dr. Watts's assertion be true, that 

" Satan trembles when he sees 
The weakest saint upon his knees," 

that arch-enemy was unusually perturbed when Ezekiel 
Cutwater was upon his. On these he had borne manly 
contests with evil. Two things, yea, three, were 
rigid in Ezekiel's creed ; fire would never have burned 
them out of him, — hatred of Popery, contempt of Angli- 
can priestcraft and apostolic succession, and adhesion 
to the dogma of adult baptism and total immersion. 
Whoso should not join with him in these, let him be 
Anathema Maranatha. 

His eyes kindled as he looked at the seething audi- 
ence. " Sir," said he, " I beg to move an amendment to 
the motion of the noble lord." (Cheers.) "That motion 
proposes to transfer to the care of the Established 
Church this tender and unconscious infant (bending 
over Ginx's Baby) just snatched from the toils of a kin- 
dred superstition." (Oh, oh! hisses and cheers.) "I with- 
draw the expression : I did not mean to be offensive." 
(Hear.) " This is a grand representative meeting, — not 



60 GINX'S BABY. 

of the English Church, not of the Baptist Church, not of 
the Wesleyan Church, but of Protestantism." (Cheera 
and Kentish fire.) " In such an assembly, is it right to 
propose any singular disposition of a representative 
infant ? This is now the adopted child, not of one, but 
of all denominations." (Cheers.) " Around his or her — 
I am not sure which — cherubic head circle the white- 
winged angels of various churches ; and on her or him, 
whichever it may be," — 

The chairman said that he might as well say that lie 
had authentic inlbrmation that it was him. 

" Him, then, — concentrate the sympathies of every 
Protestant heart. Let us not despoil the occasion of its 
greatness by exhibiting a narrow bigotry in one direc- 
tion. Let us bring into this infantile focus the rays of 
Catholic unity." (Loud cheering and Kentish fire.) " To 
me, for one, it would be eminently painful to think, — 
what doubtless would occur if the motion is adopted, — 
that, within a week of his entrance into the asylum of the 
society named in it, this diminutive and unknowing sin- 
ner should go through the farce of a supposititious admis- 
sion into the Church of Christ." (Oh !) " Yes ! I say a 
farce, whether you regard the age of the acolyte, or the 
indifferent proportion of water with which it would be 
performed." (Uproar, oh, oh 1 and some cheering from 
the Baptist section.) " But I will not now further enter 
into these things," said Mr. Cutwater, who knew his cue 
perfectly well : " I can hold these opinions, and still love 
my brethren of other denominations. I move, as an 
amendment, that a committee, consisting of one minister 
and one layman to be selected from each of the churches, 
be appointed to take charge of the physical well-being 
and mental and spiritual training of the infant." 



LOVING ONE ANOTHER. 61 

By this proposition, which was received with enthu- 
siasm, (Jinx's Baby was to be incontinently pitched into 
an arena of polemical warfare. Every one was willing 
that a committee should fight out the question vicari- 
ously ; and therefore, when Mr. Slowboy seconded the 
amendment, it was carried with loud acclamations. 

But they were not yet out of the wood. On proceed- 
ing to nominate members of the committee, the Unita- 
rians and Quakers claimed to be represented. The 
platform and the meeting were by the ears again. It 
was fiercely contended that only Evangelical Christians 
"could have a place in such a work; and many of the 
nominees declared that they would not sit on a com- 
mittee with — well, some curious epithets were used. 
The Unitarians and Quakers took their stand on the 
Catholic principles embodied in the amendment, and on 
the fact that Ginx's Baby had now " become national 
Protestant property." Mr. Cutwater and a few others, 
moved by the scandal of the dispute, interfered ; and the 
committee was at length constituted to the satisfaction 
of all .parties. It was to be called " The Branch Com- 
mittee of the Protestant Detectoral Union for promoting 
the Physical and Spiritual Well-Being of Ginx's Baby." 

A fourth resolution was adopted, " That the subject 
should be treated in the metropolitan pulpits on the 
next sabbath, and a collection taken up in the various 
churches for the benefit of the infant." This promised 
well for Master Ginx's future. 

The meeting had lasted five hours; and, while thoy 
were discussing him, the child grew hungry. In the 
tumult, every one had forgotten the subject of it ; and, 
now it was over, they dispersed without thought of him. 



62 GINx's BABY. 

But lie would not allow those near him, at all events, to 
overlook his presence. Some, foreseeing that awkward- 
ness was impending, slipped away ; while three or four 
staid to ask what was to be done with him. 

" Hand him over to the custody of the chairman," 
said a Mr. Dove. 

" I should be most happy," said he smoothly ; " but 
Mrs. Trumpeter is out of town. Could your dear wife 
take him, Mr. Dove ? " 

Mr. Dove's wife was otherwise engaged. 

The secretary was unmarried, — chambers at Nin- 
come's Inn. 

In the midst of their distress, a woman who had been 
hanging about the hall, near the platform, came forward, 
and offered to take charge of him " for the sake of the 
cause." Every one was relieved. After her name and 
address had been hastily noted, the Protestant baby was 
placed in her arms. My Lord Evergood, the chairman, 
the clergy, the secretary, and the mob went home rejoi- 
cing. Some hours after, Ginx's Baby, stripped of the 
duchess's beautiful robes, was found by a policeman, 
lying on a doorstep in one of the narrow streets not a 
huudred yards behind the Philopragmon. By an ironical 
chance, he was wrapped in a copy of the largest daily 
paper in the world. 



IX —Good Samaritans, and Good-Samaritan Twopences. 

At every breakfast-table in town next morning, the 
report of the great Protestant meeting was read ; and a 
further report, in leaded type, of the discovery of Ginx's 



GOOD SAMARITANS. 63 

Baby, at a later period of the evening, by a policeman. 
A pretty comment on the proceedings ! The Good 
Samaritan put bis patient on his ass, and carried him to 
an inn ; while the priest and the Levite, though the 
latter looked at him, at least let him alone. To have 
called a public meeting to discuss his fate before desert- 
ing him would have been a refinement of inhumanity. 
The committee were rather ashamed when they met. 
Instant measures were taken to recover the child, and 
place him in good hands. The duchess again provided 
baby-clothes. The next Sunday, sermons were preached 
on his behalf in a score of chapels. The collections 
amounted to £800, — a sum increased by donations and 
subscriptions to the handsome total of £ 1,360. 10s. 3§d. 

It will be seen hereafter what the committee did with 
the baby ; but I happen to have an account of what 
became of the funds. They were spent as follows, 
according to a balance-sheet never submitted to the 
subscribers : — 

£. s. d. 
Committee-Rooms . . . . . . 45 

Two Secretaries employed by the Committee, 120 

Agents, canvassing, &c 83 6 2 

Printing Notices, Placards, Pamphlets, a 

"Daily Bulletin of Health," "Life of 

Ginx's Baby," " Protestant Babybood, a 

Tale," " The Cradle of an Infant Martyr," 

" A Snatched Brand," and other Works 

issued by the Committee .... 596 13 5 
Advertisements of Meetings, Sermons, &c. . 261 1 1 

Legal Expenses 77 6 8 

Stationery 35 10 

Postage, Firing, and Sundries . . . 27 19 2 

Total £1.251 16 6 



64 GINx's BABT. 

This left £108. 13s. 9£d. for the baby's keep. No child 
could have been more thoroughly discussed, preached 
and written about, advertised, or advised by counsel ; 
but his resources dwindled in proportion to these ad- 
vantages. Benevolent subscribers too seldom examine 
the financial items of a report : had any who contributed 
to this fund seen the balance-sheet, they might have 
grudged that so little of their bounty went to make flesh, 
bone, and comfort for the object of it. A cynic would 
tell them, that to look sharply after the disposal of their 
guerdon was half the gift. Their indifference was akin 
to that satirized by the poet, — 

" Prodigus et stultus dedit quae spernit et odit." 

In an age of luxury, we are grown so luxurious as to 
be content to pay agents to do our good deeds for us ; 
but they charge us three hundred per cent for the 
jjrivilege. 



X. — The Force; and a Specimen of its Weakness. 

Ginx's Baby had been discovered by a policeman, 
swaddled in a penny paper distressingly familiar to 
metropolitan travellers by rail. To omit the details of 
his treatment at the hands of that great institution, 
" The Force," would be invidious. The member thereof 
who fell in with him was walking a back street, sighting 
doors with his bull's-eye. He was provided with mas- 
sive boots, so that a thief could hear him coming a hun- 
dred yards off; he was personally tall and unwieldy; 
and a dexterous commissioner had invented a dress 



THE FORCE. G5 

designed to enhance these qualities, — a heavy coat, a 
cart-horse belt, and a round cape. He had been care- 
fully drilled not to walk more than three miles an hour. 
He was not a little startled when the rays of bis lamp 
fell upon a struggling newspaper, out of which, as from 
a shell, came mysterious cries. He took up a corner of 
the paper, and peeped in upon the face of Ginx's Baby ; 
then he occupied a quarter of an hour in embarrassing 
reflections. A nearly naked child crying in the cold 
ought to be housed as soon as possible ; but X 99 was on 
his beat, and those magic words chained him to certain 
limits. This, of course, was the rule under a former 
commissioner ; and every one knows that such absurd 
strategy has been abolished in the existing regime. At 
that time, however, each watchman had his beat, to 
leave wbich was neglect of duty, except with a prisoner ; 
and then it was neglect of all the householders within 
the magic compass. Had X 99 heard the baby crying 
across the street, which was part of the beat of X 101, 
he would have passed on with a cheery heart ; for the 
case would have been beyond his jurisdiction. Unhap- 
pily, the baby was on his beat; and he was delivered 
from the temptation of transferring it to the other by 
the appearance of X 101's bull's-eye not far off. "What 
was he to do ? The station was a mile away ; the in- 
spector would not arrive for an hour; and it would be 
awkward, if not undignified, to carry on his rounds a 
shouting baby wrapped in the largest daily paper. If 
he left it where it was, and it perished, he might be 
charged with murder. He was at his wits' end : but, 
having got there, he resolved on the simplest process ; 
namely, to carry it to the station. No provision was 



66 GINS'S BABY. 

made by the regulations of the force to protect a beat 
casually deserted even for a proper purpose : hence, 
while X 99 was absent on his errand of mercy, the 
valuable shop of Messrs. Trinkett and Blouse, ecclesias- 
tical tailors, was broken into, and several stoles, chasu- 
bles, altar-cloths, and other decorative tapestries, were 
appropriated to profane uses. 

At the station, the baby was disposed of according to 
rule. Due entry was first made in the night-book, by 
the superintendent, of all the particulars of his discovery. 
Some cold milk was then procured, and poured down 
the child's throat. Afterwards, wrapped in a constable's 
cape, he was placed in a cell, where, when the door was 
locked, he could not disturb the guardians of the peace. 

The same night, in the next cell, an innocent gentle- 
man, seized with an apoplexy in the street, but entered 
in the charge-sheet as drunk and incapable, died like a 
dog. 



XI. — The Unity of the Spirit and the Bond of Peace. 

When the committee met, every one discovered his 
incongruity with the rest. Each was disposed to treat 
Ginx's Baby in a different way ; in other words, each 
wished to reflect the views of his particular sect on the 
object of their charity. They were a new " Evangelical 
Alliance," agreed only in hatred to Popery. 

Finding at their first meeting that the discussion 
needed to be brought into a focus, the committee ap- 
pointed three of their number to draw up a minute of 
the matters to be argued. This committee reported 



THE UNITY OF TIIE SPIRIT. 67 

that there arose respecting the child the following ques- 
tions : — 

" I. — As touching the body : — 

a. Wherewithal he should be fed and clothed ? 

b. In what manner and fashion that should be 

done ? 
II. — As touching the mind and spirit : — 

a. Whether he should be educated? If so, — 

b. What were to be the subjects of instruction ? 

c. What creed, if any, should be primarily 

taught ? 

d. Should he be further baptized ? If so, — 

1 . Into what communion ? 

2. By what ceremonial ? " 

This programme, it appeared to its concocters, em- 
braced every thing that concerned Ginx's Baby, except 
his death by the act of God or the queen's enemies. No 
sooner was the report made than adopted. Then a 
member, eager for the fray, moved the postponement of 
the first division of questions until the others had been 
determined. Why should apostles of truth trouble 
themselves- to serve tables ? These were very subordi- 
nate questions to them; though, I think, of first im- 
portance to Ginx's Baby. It was decided to discuss little 
Ginx's future before considering his present. 

The ball was opened by the venerable Archdeacon 
Hotten, who, amid much excitement, contended, that, 
from the earliest buddings of thought in an infant mind, 
religion should be ingrafted upon it, — there could be no 
education worth the name that was not relkrious ; that 



68 GINX'S BABY. 

with the A should be taught the origin, and with the Z 
the final destiny and destruction, of evil. To separate 
education from religion was to clip the wings of the 
heavenly dove. He asserted that the committee ought 
at once to have the child baptized in Westminster Ab- 
bey, though he was rather of opinion that the previous 
baptism was canonically valid ; that lie should be taught 
the truths of our most holy faith; and, since there could 
be no faith without a creed. — and the only national 
creed was that of the Church of England, — the baby 
should be handed over to the care of a clergyman, and 
then be sent to a proper religious school. He need not 
say that he excluded Bugby under its then profane 
management. 

The Church was, however, divided against itself; for 
the Dean of Triston said he would give more latitude 
than his very reverend brother. You ought not to de- 
fine in an infant mind a rigid outline of creed. In fact, 
he did not acknowledge any creed : he was not obliged 
to by law, and was disinclined to by his reason. He 
would rather allow the inner seeds of natural light — 
the glorious, all-pervading efflorescence of the Deity in 
all men's hearts — to grow within the young spirit. The 
dean was assuredly vague, and far less earnest than his 
brother cleric. 

The "Rev." Mr. Burapus, Unitarian, met the sugges- 
tions of the archdeacon with the scorn they merited. It 
was impossible to apply to a representative child of an 
enlightened age theories so long exploded. The dean 
had certainly come nearer the truth with that broad 
sympathy for which he was noted. He himself jwoposed 
that the child should be made a model nursling of the 



THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT. 09 

liberalism of a new era. Old things were passing away : 
all things had become new. Creeds were the discarded 
banners of a mediaeval past, fit only to be hung up in the 
churches, and looked at as historic monuments ; never- 
more to be flaunted in the front of battle! The educa- 
tion of the -day was that which taught a man the intro- 
spection whereby he recognized the divine within him- 
self, — under any aspect, under any tuition, whether of 
Brahma, Confucius, or Christ. Truth was kaleidoscopic, 
and varied with the media through which it was viewed. 
As for the child, every aspect of truth and error should 
be allowed to play upon his mind. Let him acquire 
ordinary school learning for fifteen years, and then send 
him to the London University. 

Here the chairman, and half a dozen members of the 
committee, protested that the said university was a 
school of the Devil ; and several interchanges of discour- 
tesy took place. 

Mr. Shortt, M.P., begged to suggest, as a matter of 
business, that, for the present, the child was not capable 
of receiving any ideas whatever, and might die, or prove 
to be dumb or an idiot, and so require no education. 
Ought they not to postpone this discussion until the sub- 
ject was old enough to be worth consideration? 

It was Mr. Shortt's habit to show his practical vein by 
business-like obstructions of this kind. He had been 
able a score of times to demonstrate to the House of 
Commons how silly it was to consider probabilities. In 
fa-^t, he was opposed heart and" soul to prophetic legisla- 
lation : he would live, legislatively, from hand to mouth. 

But the committee would not allow Mr. Shortt to run 
away with the bone of contention. 



70 GIXX'S BABY. 

The Rev. Dr. M'Gregor Lucas, of the National Cale- 
donian Believers, had been silent too long to contain 
himself further. This man needs some particular de- 
scription whenever his name is made public. Nay, for 
this he lives ; and by it, some think. At all events, he 
appears to be equally eager for rebuke and applause : 
they both involve notoriety, and notoriety is sure to pay. 
Few absurdities had been overlooked by his shallow in- 
genuity. Simply to have invested his limited mental 
endowments in trying to make the world believe him a 
genius would have been only so like what many thou- 
sands are doing as to have absolved him from too harsh 
a judgment ; but he traded in perilous stuff. Cheap 
prophecy was his staple. It was his wont to give out 
about once in five years that the world would shortly 
come to an end ; and, like Mr. Zadkiel, he found peo- 
ple who thought their inevitable disappointment a 
proof of his inspiration. Had you heard the honeyed 
words dropping from his lips, you would have taken him 
for a Scotch angel, and, consequently, a rarity. Could 
such lips utter harsh sayings, or distil vanities? Show 
him a priest, and you would hear ! The pope was his 
particular born foe ; popery his enemies' country : so 
he said. It was safe for him to stand and throw his 
darts. No one could say whether they hit,.' or did not ; 
while most spectators had the good will to hope that 
they did. How he. would have lived if Daniel and St. 
John had dreamed no dreams, one cannot conjecture : 
as it was, they provided the doctor with endless open- 
ings for his fancy- Since no one could solve the riddle 
of their prophecies, it was certain that no one could 
disprove his solutions. Yet these came so often to their 



THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT. 71 

own dispi'oof by lapse of time, that I can only think that 
the good doctor hoped to die before his critical periods 
came, or was so clever as to trust the infallibility of hu- 
man weakness. 

I describe Dr. Lucas at so great a length, because it 
will be easier and more edifying to the reader to con- 
ceive what he said than for me to recount it. lie 
showed the baby to be one of seven mysteries. He was 
in favor of teaching him at once to hate idolatry, music, 
crosses, masses, nuns, priests, bishops, and cardinals. 
The " humanities," the Shorter Catechism, the Confes- 
sion of Faith, and " The Whole Duty of Man," would, in 
his opinion, be the books to lay the groundwork in the 
child's mind of a Christian character of the highest 
type. 

Mr. Ogle, M P., here vigorously intervened. Said 
he, — 

" I can't, with all deference, agree to any of these 
suggestions. They involve hand-to-hand fighting over 
this baby's body. No one of us is entitled to take 
charge of him : else why did we all unite to rescue 
him from the nunnery ? He will be torn to pieces 
among contending divines ! I think a purely secular 
education is all that, as a committee, we should aim at. 
We have but just withdrawn the child from the shadow 
of a single ecclesiastical influence : would you transfer 
it to another ? Every Protestant denomination is con- 
tributing to his support : how can you devote their gifts 
to rearing him for one ? You would have no peace : 
better at once treat him as the man of Benjamin treated 
his wife, — cut him up into enough pieces to send to all 
the tribes of Israel, summoning them to the fight. I say, 



72 GINX'S BABY. 

wo have nothing to do with this just now : let him be 
educated in a secular academy, and let each sect be free 
to send its agents to instruct him out of school-hours as 
they please." 

The Rev. Theodoret Verity, M.A., rose in anger. 

" Surely, sir, you cannot seriously propound such a 
scheme ! Would you leave this precious waif to be buf- 
feted between the contending waves of truth and error, 
in the vague hope, that, by some lucky wind, he might 
finally be east upon a rock of safety ? I protest against 
all these educational heresies : they are redolent of brim- 
stone. Truth is truth, or there is none at all. If there 
be any, it is our duty to impart it to this immortal at the 
outset of his existence. Secular education ! — what do 
you mean by it ? Who shall sever one question from 
another, and call one secular, and the other religious ? 
Is not every relation and every truth in some way or 
other connected with religion ? " &c. Mr. Verity has 
been saying the same thing any time these forty years. 

" Forgive me," replied Mr. Ogle, " if I say that this is 
very vague talking. I have not proposed to sever one 
question from another. I only propose to do in a dif- 
ferent way that which is being done now by the most 
rigid of Mr. Verity's friends. It is impossible to com- 
prehend what is meant by such a statement as that 
every truth is somehow connected with religion. It may 
be that the notion — if it really is not, as I suspect it to 
be, mere verbiage and clap-trap, used by certain fools to 
mislead others — means that there is some such cohe- 
rency between all truths as there is, for instance, between 
the elements of the body. I would admit that; but is 
not blood a dilferent and perfectly severable thing from 



THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT. 73 

bone? Each has its place, office, relation. But who 
would say that one could not be regarded by a physicist 
in the largest variety of its aspects apart from the other ? 
Yet the physicist comes back again to consider with re- 
spect to each its relations to all the rest : the separate 
study has rather prepared him for more profound insight 
into those relations. Thus it is with the body of truth. 
In spite of Mr. Verity, I affirm that there are truths that 
have not in themselves any element of religion whatever. 
The forty-seventh proposition of Euclid will be taught by 
a Jesuit precisely as it is taught in the London Univer- 
sity. .Geography will affirm certain principles, and des- 
ignate places, rivers, mountains, that no faith can re- 
move and cast into unknown seas. These subjects and 
others are taught in our most bigoted schools, in separate 
hours and relations from religion. What, then, do you 
mean by affirming that there can be no secular education 
of this child apart from religious teaching? We are 
not likely to agree, if I may judge from what I have seen, 
on any one method of religious instruction for it : there- 
fore I wish first to fix common bounds within which our 
common benevolence may work. Well, we all go to the 
Bible. We agree that between its covers lies religious 
truth somewhere. If you like, let him have that; and 
let him have some kindly and holy influences about him 
in the way of practice and example, such as many of our 
sects can supply many instances of. Give him no cate- 
chism : let him read a creed in our daily life. The arti- 
cles of faith strongest in his soul will be those which 
have crystallized there from the combined action of truth 
and experience, and not, as it were, been pasted on its 
walls by ecclesiastical bill-posters. * What is truth ? ' 



74 gistx's BABY. 

he must ask and answer for himself, as we all must do 
before God. Don't mistake me : I hope I am not more 
indifferent to religion than any here present ; but I differ 
from them on the best method of imbuing the mind and 
heart with it. Surely we need not, we cannot, — it would 
be an exquisite absurdity, — pass a resolution in this com- 
mittee that the child is to be a Calvinist ! Who, then, 
would agree to secure him from any taint of Arminian 
heresy in years to come ? Dare you even resolve that 
he shall be a Christian and a Protestant ? I would not 
insure the risk. But, with so many of Christ's followers 
about me, surely, surely, without providing any ecclesi- 
astical mechanism, there will be testified to him simply 
how he may be saved. Your prayers, your visits, your 
kindly moral influence and talk, your living example of 
a goodness derived not from dogmas, but from affection- 
ate following of a holy pattern, and trust in revealed 
mercies, your pointing to that pattern, and showing the 
daily passage of these mercies, will prompt his search 
after the truth that has made you what you are. Let 
some good woman do for him a mother's part ; but choose 
her for her general goodness, and not for the dogmas of 
her church. The simpler her piety, the better for him, 
I should say I " 

This straightforward speech fell like a new apple of 
discord in the midst of the committee. Angry knots 
were formed, and the noble chairman found that he 
could not restore order. An adjournment was agreed 
to. Luckily for the body of Ginx's Baby, he had been 
meanwhile sent to a home where Protestant money se- 
cured to him, for the time, good living, while his bene- 
factors were discussing what to do with his soul. 



THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT. 75 

Surely it were no impertinence to interrupt this his- 
tory, and advert to the fact, that, in the discussion just 
related, every one was, to some extent, right, and to some 
extent agreed. That religious teaching was due to an 
immortal spirit, — some notion and evidence of the 
Divine and the great hereafter to be conveyed to it, — 
scarce was disputed. Nor was there collison over the 
necessity of what is called intellectual cultivation. The 
boy must be taught something of the world in which he 
was to live ; nay, this latter knowledge seemed to be 
most immediately practical. As each disputant fixed 
his eye<on one or the other aim, that end appeared to 
him to be the most important. Hence, by a natural 
lapse, they came to treat subjects as antagonistic which 
were, in fact, parallel and quite consistent. The one 
called the others godless : the others threw back the 
aspersion of bigotry. Then came complication. What 
was " religion " ? Intellectual culture they could agree 
about, — it embraced well-known areas, — but this reli- 
gion divided itself into many disputable fields. These 
brother Protestants were like country neighbors, who 
must encounter each other at fairs, markets, meets, and 
balls, and smile and greet, though each at heart is look- 
ing savagely at the other's landmarks, and most are, 
very likely, fighting bitter lawsuits all the while. It was 
because religion meant creed to most members of the 
committee, and because it so implies to the vast bodies 
they represented, that they could not come to terms 
about Ginx's Baby or any other infantile immortal. Not 
always, perhaps, but often, they fought for futile distinc- 
tions. Had Mahomet's creed consisted of but one 
article, " There is one God" the blood of many nations 



76 GINX'S BABY. 

might never have given testimony against the creed they 
resented when to it he tacked, " and Mahomet is his 
prophet." Could Protestants but consent to agree in 
their agreement, and peacefully differ in their petty dif- 
ferences, how would the aggregated impulse of a simple 
faith roll down before it all the impediments of error ! 

When Ginx's Baby had grown to a discretionary age, 
and was at all able to know truth from error (supposing 
that to be knowable), there were in the country fifty 
thousand reverend gentlemen of every tincture of reli- 
gious opinion who might ply him with their various 
theories ; yet few of these would be contented unless 
they could seize him while his young nature was plastic, 
and try to imprint on immortal clay the trade-mark of 
some human invention. 



XII. — No Funds, no Faith, no Works. 

The Committee of the Protestant Detectoral Union 
on Ginx's Baby held twenty-three meetings. They were 
then as far from unity of purpose as when they set out. 
Variety was given to the meetings by the changing com- 
binations of members in attendance. The finances were 
little heeded in the intensity of their zeal for truth. 
These at length fell altogether into the hands of the 
association's secretary, and, we have seen, involved large 
items of expense. The twenty-three meetings extended 
over a year. At the end of that time, the secretary 
startled the committee by laying on the table a demand 
for the board and keep of the Protestant baby for three 
months, amounting to £36 ; and adding, that the sum in 



IN" TRANSITU. 77 

hand was £l. 4s. A^d. In his report he said, " No effort 
has been spared, by means of advertisements, pamphlets, 
tales, leaders and {paragraphs in newspapers and reli- 
gious journals, together with occasional sermons, to 
maintain the public interest in this child ; but attention 
has been diverted from him by the great Roman Spozzi 
case, and the anxiety created throughout the Protestant 
world by the recent discovery, made by Dr. Gooddee, of 
a solitary survivor of the ancient Church of the Vieux- 
bois Protestants in a secluded valley of the Pyrenees." 

The secretary asked the committee to provide the 
money .to discharge the baby's liabilities ; but they in- 
stantly adjourned, and no effort could afterwards get a 
quorum together. When the persons who had charge 
of the Protestant foundling discovered the state of 
affairs, they began to dun the secretary, and to neglect 
the child, now about thirteen months old and preparing 
to walk. Since no money appeared, they sold whatever 
clothes had been provided for him, and absconded from 
the place where they had been farming him for Protes- 
tantism. The secretary, by chance bearing of this, was 
discreet enough to make no inquiries. Ginx's Baby, 
" as a Protestant question," vanished from the world. I 
never heard that any one was asked what had been done 
with the funds ; but I have already furnished the ac- 
count that ou"ht to have been rendered. 



Xni.— In Transitu. 



One night, near twelve o'clock, a shrewd tradesman, 
looking out of his shop-door before he turned into bed, 



78 gistx's BABY. 

heard a cry, which proceeded from a bundle on the 
pavement. This he discovered to be an infant wrapped 
in a potato-sack. lie was quick enough to observe that 
it had been deftly laid over a line chiselled across the 
pavement to the corner of his house; which line he 
knew to be the boundary between his own parish of St. 
Simon Magus and the adjacent parish of St. Bartimeus. 
He took note, being a business-man, of the exact posi- 
tion of the child's body in relation to this line, and then 
conveyed it to the workhouse of the other parish. 



PART III. 

WHAT THE PARISH DID WITH HIM. 
I. — Parochial Knots; to be untied without Prejudice. 

T | TlID infant borne to the workhouse of St. Bartimeus 
-*- was Ginx's Baby. When he had been placed on 
the floor of the matron's room, and examined by the 
master, that official turned to the unwelcome bearer of 
the burden : — 

" Did you find this child? " 

" Yes." 

" Where ? " 

" Lying opposite my shop, in Nether Place." 

" What's your name ? " 

"Doll." 

" Oh ! you're the cheesemonger. Your shop's on the 
other side of the boundary, in the _ other parish. The 
child ought not to come here : it doesn't belong to us." 

"Yes, it does: it wasn't on my side of the line." 

" But it was in front of your house ? " 

" Well, the line runs crosswise : it don't follow the 
child was in our parish." 

" Oh, nonsense I there's no doubt about it ! We can't 
take the child in. You must carry it away again." 

79 



80 GINX'S BABY. 

Mr. Snigger turned to leave the room. 

" Wait a bit, sir," said Mr. Doll. " I shall leave the 
child here, and you can do as you like with it. It ain't 
mine, at all events. I say, it lay in your parish ; and, if 
you don't, look after it, you may be the worse of it. The 
coroner's sure to try to earn his fees. Good-night ! " 

He hurried from the room. 

" Stop ! " shouted the master, " I say : I don't accept 
the child. You leave it here at your own risk. We 
keep it without prejudice, remember ; without preju- 
dice, sir ! — without " — 

Mr. Doll was in the street, and out of hearing. 



n. — A Boahd of Guardians. 

The guardians of St. Bartimeus met the day after Mr. 
Doll's clever stratagem. Among other business was a 
report from the master of the workhouse, that a child, 
name unknown, found by Mr. Doll, cheesemonger, of 
Nether Place, in the Parish of St. Simon Magus, oppo- 
site his shop, and, as he alleged, on the nearer side of 
the parish boundary, had been left at the workhouse, 
and was now in the custody of the matron. The guar- 
dians Avere not accustomed to restrain themselves, and did 
not withhold the expi-ession of their indignation upon 
this announcement. As Mr. Doll had himself been a 
guardian of St. Simon Magus, it was clear to their im-' 
partial minds that he was trying by a trick to foist a 
bastard — perhaps his own — on the wrong parish. 

Mr. Cheekey, a licensed victualler, moved that the 
master's report be put under the table. 



A BOARD OF GUARDIANS. 81 

Mr. Slinkum, draper, seconded the motion. 

Mr. Edge, ironmonger, pointed out that there was no 
parliamentary precedent for such a disposition of the 
report ; and, further, that such action did not dispose of 
the haby. 

" Well," said Mr. Cheekey, turning painfully red, " no 
matter how ye put it. I move to get rid of the brat. 
What's the best form of motion ? " 

A churchwarden, who happened to be a gentleman, 
explained that the board could not dismiss the question 
in so summary a way. " He could foresee that there 
might be a nice point of law in the case. They would 
have to take some legal means of ascertaining their lia- 
bilities, and of forcing the other parish to take the child 
if they ought to do so. They must consult their solici- 
tor." 

This gentleman was sent for post-haste. Meanwhile, 
the baby was ordered to be brought in for inspection. 
The matron had handed him over to a sort of half-witted 
inmate of the house, whose wits, however, were strangely 
about him at the wrong time, to nurse and amuse him. 
This person brought Ginx's Baby into the board-room, 
and placed him on the table. The board of guardians 
took a good look at him. He was not then in fair con- 
dition. He was limp, he was dirty, hollow in the cheeks, 
white, stiff in his limbs, and half naked (to be regard- 
less of gender), — 

" Pallidula, rigida, nudjla." 

" Hum ! " said Mr. Stink, who was a dog-breeder, 
" what's his pedigree ? " 



82 GINX'S BABY. 

This brutal joke was well received by some of the 
guardians. 

" His pedigree," answered the half-wit gravely, " goes 
back for three hundred years. Parients unknown by 
name, but got by Misery out o' Starvashun. The line 
began with Poverty out o' Laziness in Queen Elizabeth's 
time. The breed has been a large 'un, wotever you 
thinks of the quality." 

This pleasantry was less acceptable to the board. 

" Well," said Mr. Scoop, gi*oeer, a great stickler for 
parliamentary modes of procedure, "I move it be com- 
mitted." 

" Committed ! Where ? " said Mr. Stink. 

" To Newgate, I s'pose," said the half-wit, his eyes 
twinkling. 

" Nonsense, sir ! — for consideration. Send that man 
out ! " exclaimed Scoop : " clear the room for consulta- 
tion ! " 

Davus was expelled, and the baby was then formally 
consigned to the care of a committee. By this time, (he 
legal adviser came in. The facts having been stated to 
him, he said, — 

" Gentlemen, as at present advised, I am of opinion 
that the parish in which the child was found is bound to 
maintain him. If Mr. Doll (a highly respectable per- 
son, my own cheesemonger) found the child beyond the 
boundaries of St. Simon Magus, — and he will, of course, 
swear that he did, — you cannot refuse to take it in. 
However, 1 had better ascertain the facts from Mr. Doll, 
and take the opinion of counsel. Meanwhile, we must 
beware not to compromise ourselves by admitting any 
thing, or doing any thing equivalent to an admission. 



A BOARD OF GUARDIANS. 83 

Let me see, — ah ! — yes, — a notice to be served on the 
other parish, repudiating the infant ; another notice to 
Mr. Doll to take it away, and that it remains here at his 
risk and expense. You see, gentlemen, we could hardly 
venture to return it to Mr. Doll : we should create an 
unhappy impression in the minds of the public " — 

" D n the public ! " said Mr. Stink. 

" Quite so, my dear sir," said Mr. Phillpotts, smiling, 
— " quite so ; but that is not a legal, or, in fact, practicable 
mode of discarding them : Ave must act with public opin- 
ion, I fear. Then, to resume, thirdly, and to be strictly 
safe,'we must serve a notice on the infant and all whom 
it may concern. I think I'll draft it at once." 

In a few minutes, the committee in charge pinned to 
the only garment of Ginx's Baby a paper in the follow- 
in"; form : — 



PARISH OF ST. BARTIMEUS. 
(name unknown"), a Foundling, and all other 



persons interested in the said Foundling. 

TAKE NOTICE, 

That yon, or cither of you, hare no just or lawful claim to have 
you or the said infant chargeable on the said parish. And this 
is to notify, that you, the sai<l infant, are retained in the work- 
hoitseofthe said parish under protest ; and that whatsoever is 
or may be done or provided for you is at the proper charge of 
you, and all such persons as are and were by law bound to main- 
tain and keep the same. 

Winkle & Phillpotts, 

Solicitors for the Board. 



84 giistx's BABY. 



III.— "The "World is air Parish." 

When Mr. Plrillpotts called upon Doll, the cheese- 
monger, the latter straightway gave him the facts aa 
they had occurred. He pointed out the exact spot on 
which the bundle had lain; he gave an estimate of the 
number of inches on each side of the line occupied by it, 
and declared that the head and shoulders of the infant 
lay in the parish of the solicitor's clients. Ginx's Baby, 
under the title " Re a Foundling," was once more sub- 
mit ted for the opinion of counsel. They advised the 
board, that as the child was in both parishes when 
found, but had been taken up by a rate-payer of St. 
Simon Magus, the latter parish was bound to support 
him. Whereupon the guardians of St. Bartimeus at 
their next meeting resolved that the vestry of the other 
parish should have a written notice to remove the child ; 
failing which, application should be made to the Queen's 
Bench for a mandamus to compel them to do it. 

On receiving the challenge, the guardians of St. Simon 
Magus also took counsel's opinion. They were advised, 
that as the greater part, and especially the head, of the 
infant, was, when discovered, in the parish of St. Barti- 
meus, the latter was clearly chargeable. Both parties 
then proceeded to swear affidavits. The attorney- 
general and solicitor-general, the two great law-oflieers 
of the crown, were retained on opposite sides, and took 
fees, — not for an imperial prosecution, but as petty 
queen's counsel in an inter-parochial squabble. 



WITHOUT PREJUDICE. 85 

IV. — Without Prejudice to Any One bdt the Guardians. 

The Court of Queen's Bench, after hearing an elabo- 
rate statement from the attorney-general, granted a 
rule nisi for a mandamus. This rule was entered for 
argument in a paper called " The Special Paper ; " and, 
the list being a heavy one, nearly a year elapsed before 
it was reached. It was then again postponed several 
times "for the convenience of counsel." 

The Board of St. Bartimeus chafed under the law's 
delay. They became morbidly sensitive to the incubus 
of Ginx's Baby, especially as the press had been review- 
ing some of their recent acts with great bitterness. The 
guardians were defiant. Having served their notices, 
they were induced by Mr. Stink to resolve not to main- 
tain the infant. The poor child was threatened with dis- 
solution. Thus, no doubt, many difficulties in parochial 
administration are solved, — the subject vanishes away. 
The baby was kept provisionally in a room at the work- 
house. On the outside of the door was a notice in fair 
round-hand : — 



NOTICE. 
doll's foundling. 

Pending the legal inquiry into the facts concerning the above 
infant, and a decision as to its settlement, all officials, assist- 
ants, and seri'ants of the workhouse are forbidden to enter the 
room in which it is deposited, or to render it any service or 
assistance, on pain of dismissal. No food is to be supplied to 
it from the workhouse kitchen. 

N. B. — Tins is not intended to prevent persons other than 
officials, cj'c, from having access to the infant, or assisting it. 

By Order of the Board. 



86 GINX'S BABY. 

That any body of human beings other than Patago- 
nians could have coolly contemplated such a result as 
must have followed upon the strict performance of this 
order would be incredible except in the instance of the 
guardians of St. Bartimeus. There was nothing they 
could not do, or leave undone. Fortunately for Ginx's 
Baby, the order was disobeyed. Occasionally, lady- 
visitors went to look at him and give him some food. 
lie was toddling about the room oii unsteady legs ; but 
Charity seemed to be appalled by the official questions 
hanging about this child. The master, Snigger, whose 
business it was every day to ascertain whether the cause 
of the great parochial quarrel was in or out of existence, 
became a traitor to the board. When the child grew 
hungry and dangerously thin, he brought bottles of pap 
prepared by Mrs. Snigger, and administered it to him. 
No conclusions to the disfavor of the board were to be 
drawn from this conduct ; for Snigger was particular to 
say to the boy in a loud voice, each time he fed him, — 

" Now, youngster, this is without prejudice : remember ! 
I give you due notice, — without prejudice." 

Who, in Master Ginx's situation, would have had any 
prejudices to such action, or have expressed them, even 
if they were entertained ? He took no objection as he 
took the pap ; while Snigger was glad to be able to dc 
an unusual kindness without compromising the parish. 

Thus things had gone on for many months, when one 
day an eye of that Argus monster, the public, was set 
upon Ginx's Baby. A well-known nobleman, calling at 
the workhouse to see a little girl whom he had saved 
from infamy, as he passed down a corridor was arrested 
by the notice on the door of our hero's room. Curiosity 



WITHOUT PREJUDICE. 87 

took him in, and horror chained him there for some 
time. Had he not entered, Ginx's Baby, spite of 
Snigger, would in twenty-four hours have ceased to 
Biipply facts to history. He was suffering from low 
fever ; and his condition was as sensationally shocking as 
any reporter could have wished. Out rushed the peer 
for a doctor ; took a cab to a magistrate, and detailed the 
whole case, to be repeated in next morning's papers. 
Penny-a-liners ran to the spot, wrote vivid descriptions 
of The baby and the room, and transcribed the notice. 
The guardians were drubbed in trenchant leaders and 
indignant letters. Thoy, instead of bending to the 
storm, strove to confront it, and passed angry resolutions 
of a childish and grotesque character. The few of them 
who possessed any sense of propriety were railed at in 
the meetings till they ceased to attend. The uproar 
outside increased. Why did not the president of. the 
poor-law board interfere V At last he did interfere ; 
that is, instead of visiting the scene himself, and satis- 
lying his own eyes as to the truth of what his ears had 
heard, — a process that would have taken a couple of 
hours, — he appointed a gentleman to hold an inquiry. 
The guardians became furious. The reports of their 
proceedings read like the vagaries of a lunatic-asylum 
or the deliberations of the American Senate. They 
discharged Snigger for breach of orders, substituting a 
relative of Mr. Stink. They put a lock on the door, and 
passed food to the baby by a stick. A committee was 
appointed to see him fed ; and they forwarded a memorial 
to the poor-law board, stating that " he daily had more 
food than he could possibly eat, and was in admirable 
condition." They refused to allow any doctor but one 



88 GINX's BABY. 

employed by themselves to see him. They procured 
from him a certificate that the noble busybody and his 
physician had made a mistake, and that all the functions 
of life in the infant appeared to be in perfect order. 
Then came the gentleman and the inquiry, and his 
report, and a letter from the poor-law board, and 
further discussions and more letters, until the bewildered 
public gnashed its teeth at the minister, the guardians, 
and the law, and wished them all at Land's End, or 
beyond it. 



V. — An Ungodly Jungle. 

The case of the Guar-dians of St. Bartimcus against 
the Guardians of St. Simon Magus was at length reached. 
The ai-gument lasted for two days. There is a grim 
work, the short title whereof is " Burns's Justice," in 
five fat volumes, from which the legal Dryasdust turns 
aghast. In one of these portentous books, title " Poor," 
pp. 1200, the inquisitive may find a code unrivalled 
by the most malignant ingenuity of former or contem- 
porary nations, — a code wherein, by gradual accre- 
tion, has been framed a system of relief to poverty 
and distress so impolitic, so unprincipled, that none but 
the dryest, mustiest, most petrified parish-official could 
be expected to lift up his voice to defend it ; so compli- 
cated, that no man under heaven knows its length or 
breadth or height or depth : yet it stands to this hour 
a monument of English stolidity, a marvel of lazy or 
ignorant statesmanship. Imagine, if you please, a lord 



AN UNGODLY JUNGLE. 89 

chief justice and three puisnes, all keen, practical men, 
alive to public policy and the common-weal, eager to ex- 
tricate the truth and do the right, plunging into this 
" ungodly jungle," thwarted at every turn in search of 
justice for Ginx's Baby. With all his patient industry 
and lightning quickness of apprehension, the chief jus- 
tice found it hard to reconcile past and present, or evolve 
from the vast confusion any thing consistent with his 
moral instincts. 

Clear the board, gentlemen ! True regenerative 
legislation will begin by drawing away the rubbish. 
Reform means more than repair. Mend, patch ; take 
down a little here, prop up some tottering nuisance 
there ; fill in gaping chinks with patent legislative cem- 
ent ; coat old facades with bright paint ; hide decay be- 
neath a gloze of novelty ; titivate, decorate, furbish, — 
and, after all, your house is not a new one, but a whited 
sepulchre shaking to decay. Repair ? There is a Repair 
party, intermediating^ between Tories and Reformers, — 
Radicals or Rooters let us call these latter, if you like, — 
who cling to " vested interests " and all other sorts of 
antique nuisances, yet say tbey are willing to improve 
them. Reform, which means, pull down with bold 
statesman's hand, and with like hand rebuild, is no dar- 
ling of your political repairer. Call the party and the 
men by their right names ; and give me, for utility in 
legislation or administrative action, an old Tory and 
obstructive party, rather than this middling, meddling, 
muddling repairer, — 

" Eager to change, yet fearful to destroy." 



90 GINx's BABY. 

Just now, all social reformation, in its noblest aims 
and attempts, is lettered by tbe Repair party. What is 
termed sanitary reform is enfeebled, and the vigor 
withdrawn from it, by this party. " Vested rights," 
" the liberty of the people," " interference with personal 
freedom," " expense," — these are the watchwords of 
the Repairer, in opposition to him, who, pointing to the 
pallor and fever of a hundred neighborhoods, calls upon 
a ministry to cleanse them with imperial force. 

A comprehensive scheme of national education is 
seized and half throttled by the Repair party. " Oh ! 
utilize what there is ; improve on and tack to the de- 
nominational system ; avail yourself of the jealousy of 
sects ; see what a grand building that has already 
erected ! True, it is not large enough ; true, it is badly 
built : but repair that, and add wings. It will cost you 
ever so much to rebuild. Repair ! " 

The methods of relief to the poor are old, cumbrous, 
unequal, — as stupid as those who administer them. 
Forth steps the reformer, and cries out, " Clear this 
wrack away ! Get rid of your antiquated Bumbledom, 
your parochial and non-parochial distinctions, your com- 
plicated map of local authorities ; re-distribute the king- 
dom on some more practical system, redress the injustice 
of unequal rating, improve the machinery and spirit of 
relief, and so on." You have the Repair party shouting 
its Non possumus as loudly as any other arch-obstruc- 
tive : " Heaven forbid ! Queen Elizabeth and the jwor- 
laws forever ! To the rescue of local government and 
vested interests ! Repair ! " 

Some one with a long head and a divinely-warmed 
heart, searching vainly for help to thousands in the 



AX UNGODLY JUNGLE. 91 

packed alleys of his English home, sends his quick 
glance across seas to rich lands that daily cry to heaven 
for strong arms that wield the plough and spade. 
" Ho ! " he shouts, " labor to land ; starvation to pro- 
duction ; death unto life ! " And he calls upon every 
statesman and patriot to help the good work, and give 
their energies to frame an emigration scheme. Then 
the Repair party foams : " Send away the labor, the 
source of our wealth? No! Mend the condition of the 
laborer ; give him the sop of political rights, — free break- 
fasts, the ballot. Give State funds to alter social con- 
ditions ? No ! Improve the methods of local assistance 
to emigration : it is a temporary remedy. Repair ! " 

Thus, according to the gospel of this party, every thing 
must be subject of restoration only. Like antiquai'ians, 
they utter groans over the abolition of any thing, however 
ugly it may be, however" unfitted for human uses, and 
with however so elegant a piece of artistry you desire to 
displace it. For them a Gilbert Scott politician, rever- 
ential restorer of bygone styles, enthusiastic to conserve 
and amend the grotesque Gothic policies of the past, 
rather than some Brunelor Stephenson statesman, engi- 
neering in novel mastery of circumstances , — not fearful 
to face and conquer even the antique iurpediinents of 
Nature. Give me a trenchant statesman, or, I pray you, 
leave legislation alone. Better things as they are than 
patched to distraction. 



At length, by means of some delicate legal adjust- 
ments, the judges saw their, way to affirming that Ginx's 
Baby's parish was that of St. Bartimeus, and refused the 
rule for a mandamus. 



92 GINX'S BABY. 



VI. — Parocihal Benevolence ; and Another Translation. 

The authorities of St. Bartimeus did not take kindly ta 
the charge imposed upon them by the Queen's Bench. 
Some of the guardians privately hinted to the master 
that it was unnecessary to overfeed the infant. They 
did not burthen him with much clothing ; and what he 
had was shared with many lively companions. When 
you, good matron, look at your little pink-cheeked daugh- 
ter, so clean and so cosey in her pretty cot, waking to see 
the well-faced nurse, or you, still sweeter to her eyes, 
watching above her dreams, perhaps you ought to stop 
a moment to contrast the scene with the sad tableaux 
you may get sight of not far away. . . . Ginx's Baby 
was not an ill-favored child. He had inherited his fa- 
ther's frame and strength : these helped him through the 
changes we are relating. What if these capacities had, 
by simple nourishing food, cleanly care-taking, and 
brighter, kindlier associations, been trained into full 
working order ? Left alone or ill tended, they were daily 
dwindling ; and the depreciation was going on not solely 
at the expense of little Ginx, but of the whole com- 
munity. To reduce bis strength one-half was to reduce 
one-half his chances of independence, and to multiply 
the prospects of his continuous application for State 

AID. 

The money spent in stopping a hole in a Dutch dike 
is doubtless better invested than if it were to be re- 
tained until a vast breach had laid half a kingdom under 
water. Surely your Hollander would agree to be 
mulcted in one-third of his fortune rather than run the 
hazard. 



PAROCHIAL BENEVOLENCE. 93 

Every day through this wealthy country there are 
men and women busy marring the little images of God 
that are by and by to be part of its public, shadowing 
young spirits, repi'essing their energy, sapping their vigor 
or failing to make it up, corrupting their nature by foul 
associations moral and physical. Some are doing it by 
special license of the Devil, others by act of Parliament, 
others by negligence or niggardliness. Could you teach 
or force these people — many unconsciously engaged in 
the vile work — to run together, as men alarmed by 
sudden danger, and throw around a helpless generation 
influences and a care more akin to your own home-ideal, 
would you not transfigure the next epoch ? would not 
your labor and sacrifice be a God-work, reaching out 
weighty, fruit-laden branches far into the grateful future ? 
'Tis by feeling and enjoining everywhere the need of 
such a movement as this that you, O all-powerful 
woman ! can carry your will into the play of a great 
economic and social reform. Society that recognizes not 
a root-truth like that is sowing the wind : God knows 
what it will reap. 

So the guardians, keeping carefully within the law, 
neglected nothing that could sap little Ginx's vitality, 
deaden his happiest instincts, derange moral action, cause 
hope to die within his infant breast almost as soon as it 
were born. Good God ! 

The items the board were really entitled to charge 
the rate-payers as supplied to our hero were — 

Dirt, 

Fleas, 

Foul air, 

Chances of catching skin-diseases, fevers, &c, 



94 GINX'S BABY. 

Vile company, 

Neglect, 

Occasional cruelty, and 

A small supply of bad food and clothing. 
Every pauper was to them an obnoxious charge, by any 
and every means to be reduced to a minimum or nil. 
Ginx's Baby was reduced to a minimum. His constitu- 
tion enabled him to protest against reduction to nil. 
But just after the bills of costs had been taxed, mulct- 
ing the rate-payers of St. Bartimeus in a sum of more 
than £l,G00, the guardians were made aware of the 
name and origin of their charge. One of the persons 
who had deserted him was arrested for theft ; and among 
other articles in her possession were some of the baby's 
clothes. She confessed the whole story, and declared 
that the child left in Nether Place was no other than 
the Protestant Baby, son of Ginx, about whom so much 
stir had been made two years before. The guardians 
were not long in tracing Ginx ; and at his quarters iu 
Rosemary Street the hapless changeling was one day 
delivered by a deputy relieving-officer, with the benedic- 
tion, by me sadly recorded, — 
" There he is, d — n him ! " 

I am sure, if the guardians had been there, they would 
have said, — 
" Amen 1 " 



PART IV. 

WHAT THE CLUBS AND POLITICIANS DID WITH 
HIM. 

I. — Moved on. 

GINX'S BABY'S brothers and sisters would have 
nothing to say to him ; Mrs. Ginx declared she 
could see in him no likeness to her own dear lost one ; 
and her husband swore" that the brat never was liis. 
The couple had latterly been pinching themselves and 
their children to save enough to emigrate. For this pur- 
pose, aid and counsel were given to them by a neighbor- 
ing curate, whose name, were my pages destined to im- 
mortality, should be printed here in golden letters. Rich 
and full will be his sheaves when many a statesman 
reaps tares. Finding that a thirteenth child was im- 
posed on them by so superior a force as the law of Eng- 
land, the Ginxes hastened their departure. 

Their last night in London, towards the small hours, 
Ginx, carrying our hero, went along Birdcage Walk. 
He scarcely knew where he was going, or how he was 
about to dispose of his burden ; but he meant to get rid 
of it. On he went, here and there met by shadowy 
creatures, who came towards his footsteps in the uncer- 

95 



96 GINX'S BABY. 

tain darkness, and, when they could see that he was no 
quarry for them, flitted away again into the night. 

He passed the dingy houses (since replaced by the 
Foreign Office), across the open space before the Horse 
Guards, near the house of a popular prime-minister, and 
up the broad steps, till he stood under the York Column. 

The shadow of this was an inviting place ; but a 
policeman, turning his lantern suspiciously on the man 
walking about at that silent hour with a child in his 
arms, frustrated his Avish. Slowly Ginx tramped along 
Pall Mall, with only one other creature stirring, as it 
seemed for the moment, — a gentleman who turned up 
the steps of a large building. Seating the child on the 
bottom step, and telling him not to cry, Ginx instantly 
crossed the road, turned into St. James's Square, passed 
by the rails, and, stealing from corner to corner through 
the mazes of that locality, reached home by way of 
Piccadilly and Grosvenor Place. Henceforth this history 
shall know him no more. 



II. — Club Ideas. 

Scarcely had the shadow of his parent vanished 
in the gloom before Ginx's Baby piped forth a lusty pro- 
test : the street rang again. Ere long, the doors at the 
top of the steps swung back, and a portly form stood in 
the light. 

" Halloo ! what's the matter ? " (This was a general 
observation ioto space.) " Why, bless my heart ! here's 
a child crying on the steps ! " 

Another forrn appeared. 



CLUB IDEAS. 97 

" Is there nobody with it ? Halloo ! any one there ? " 

No answer came save from poor little Ginx ; but his 
was decided. The two servants descended the steps, 
and looked at the miserable boy without touching him. 
Then they peered into the darkness, in hope that they 
might get a glimpse of his mother or a policeman. A 
rapid step sounded on the pavement, and a gentleman 
came up to the group. 

"_What have we here ? " he said gently. 

" It's a child, Sir Charles, I found crying on tbe steps. 
I expect it's a trick to get rid of him. We are looking 
for a-policeman to take him away." 

" Poor little fellow ! " said Sir Charles, stooping to 
take a fair look at Ginx's Baby ; " for you and such as 
you the policeman or the parish-officers are the national 
guardians, and the prison or the poor-house the home. 
. . . Bring him into the club, Smirke." 

The men hesitated a moment before executing so un- 
wonted a demand; but Sir Charles Sterling was a man 
not safely to be thwarted, — a late minister, and a mem- 
ber of the committee. The child, being carried into the 
magnificent hall of the club, stood on its mosaic floor. 
From above, the radiance of the gas " sunlight " 
streamed down over the marble pillars, and glanced on 
gilded cornices and panels of scagliola. A statue of the 
Queen looked upon him from the niche that opened to 
the dining-room ; another of the great Puritan soldier, 
statesman, and ruler, with his stern, massive front ; and 
yet another, with the strong yet gentle features of the 
champion free-trader, seemed to regard him from their 
several corners. On the walls around were portraits of 
men who had striven for the deliverance of the people 
7 



98 GINx's BABY. 

from ancient yokes and fetters. Of course, Ginx's Baby 
did not see all this. He, poor boy ! dazed, stood with a 
knuckle in his eye, while the porter, lackeys, Sir Charles 
Sterling, and others who strolled out of the reading- 
room, curiously regarded him. But any one observing 
the scene apart might have contrasted the place with 
the child, — the principles and the professions whereof 
this grandeur was the monument and consecrated taber- 
nacle with this solitary atomic specimen of the material 
whereon they were to work. What social utility had re- 
sulted from the great movements initiated by them who 
erected and frequented this place ? Ought they to have 
had, and did they still need, a complement ? While 
wonderful. political changes had been wrought, and bene- 
fits not to be exaggerated won for many classes, what 

HAD BEEN DONE FOR GlNX'S BABY? 

The query would not have been very ridiculous. lie 
was a unit of the British Empire : nothing could blot 
out that fact before heaven. Had any thing been left 
undone that ought to have been done, or done that had 
well been left undone, or were better to be undone now ? 
Of a truth, that was worth a thought. 

" What's all this? " said a big member of Parliament, 
— a minister renowned for economy in matters financial 
and intellectual. " What are you doing with this 
youngster ? I never saw such an irregularity in a club 
in my life." 

" If you saw it oftener, you would think more about 
it," said Sir Charles Sterling. " We found him on the 
steps. I think he was asking for you, Glibton." 

This sally turned a laugh against the minister. 

" Well," said another, " he has come to the wrong 
quarter if he wants money." 



CLUB IDEAS. 99 

" I shouldn't wonder," said a third, " if he were one 
of the new messengers at the office of popular edifices. 
Glibton is reducing their staff." 

" If that's the case, I think you have reached the 
minimum here, Glibton ! " cried Sir Charles. " Can't the 
country afford a livery ? " 

" Bother you all ! " replied the secretary, who was 
secretly pleased to be quizzed for his peculiarities: 
" tell us what this means. Whose ' lark ' is it ? " 

" No lark at all," said Sterling. " Here is a problem 
for you and all of us to solve. This forlorn object is rep- 
resentative, and stands here to-night preaching us a 
serious sermon. He was deserted on the club steps, — 
left there, perhaps, as a piece of clever irony : he might 
be son to some of us. What's your name, my boy ? " 

Ginx's Baby managed to say " Dunno ! " 

" Ask him if he has any name," said an Irish ex- 
member with a grave face. 

Ginx's Baby to this question responded distinctly 
" No." 

" No name ? " said the humorist : " then the author of 
his being must be Wilkie Collins." 

Everybody laughed at this indifferent pleasantry but 
our hero. His bosom began to heave ominously . 

" What's to be done with him ? " 

" Send him to the workhouse. " 

" Send him to the D ! " (there may be brutality 

among; the gods and goddesses.) 

" Give him to the porter." 

" No, thank you, sir," said he promptly. 

The gentlemen were turning away, when Sir Charles 
stopped them. 



100 GINX'S BABY. 

" Look here ! " he said, taking the hoy's arm, and bar- 
ing it : " this boy can hardly be called a human being. 
See what a thin arm he bas ! how flaccid and colorless 
the flesh seems ! what an old face ! — and I can scarcely 
feel any pulse. Good heavens ! get him some wine. A 

few hours will send him to the D sure enough. . . . 

What are we to do for him, Glibton ? I say again, he 
is only part of a great problem. There must be hun- 
dreds of thousands growing up like this child ; and 
what a generation to contemplate in all its relations and 
effects ! " 

The gentlemen were dashed by his earnestness. 

" Oh ! you're exaggerating," said Glibton : " there 
can't be such widespread misery. Why, if there were, 
the people would be wrecking our houses." 

" Ab ! " replied the other sadly, " will you wait to be 
convinced by that sort of thing before you believe in 
their misery ? I assure you, what I say is true. I could 
bring you a hundred clergymen to testily to it to-morrow 
morning." 

" God forbid ! " said Glibton. " Good-night ! " 

The right honorable gentleman extinguished the 
subject in bis own little brain with his big hat: but 
everywhere else the sparks are still aglqw ; and he, with 
all like him, may wake up suddenly, as frightened 
women in the night, to find themselves environed in the 
red glare of a popular conflagration. Well for them 
then if they are not in charge of the State machinery. 
"What an hour will that be for hurrying to and fro with 
water-pipes and buckets, when proper forethought, 
diligence, and sacrifice would have made the building 
fireproof 1 



A THOROUCH-PACED REFORMER. 101 



EH. — ATnoROucii-PACED Reformer, if not a Revolutionary. 

By the kindness and influence of Sir Charles Sterling, 
Ginx's Baby, that night, and long after, found shelter in 
the Radical Club, lie gave rise to a discussion in the 
smoking-room next evening that ought to be chronicled. 
Several members of the committee supported his bene- 
factor in urging that the child should be adopted by the 
club as a pledge of their resolve to make the questions 
ofwhich he seemed to be the embodied emblem subjects 
of legislative action. Others said that those questions 
being, in their view, social, and not political, were not 
proper ones to give impulse to a party-movement ; and 
that the entertainment in the club of • this foundling 
would be a gross irregularity : they did not want sam- 
ples of the material respecting which they were theoriz- 
ing. To some of the hitter Sir Charles had been insist- 
ing, that, whether they kept the child or not, they could 
not stille the questions excited by his condition. 

" You may delay, but you cannot dissipate them. 
We are filling up our sessions with party-struggles, 
theoretic discussions, squabbles about foreign polities, 
debates on political machinery, while year by year the 
condition of the people is becoming more invidious and 
full of peril. Social and political reform ought to be 
linked : the people on whom you confer new political 
rights cannot enjoy them without health and well- 
being." 

" But all our legislation is directed to that ! " ex- 
claimed Mr. Joshua Hale. " Reform, free trade, free 
corn, — have these not enhanced the wealth of the peo- 
ple V " 



102 GINX'S BABY. 

" Partially ; yet there are classes unregeherated by 
their reviving influences. Free trade cannot insure work, 
nor can free corn provide food, for every citizen." 

" Nor any other legislation : let us be practical. I 
own there is much to be done. I have often stated my 
' platform.' We must clip the enormous expenditure on 
soldiers and ships ; reduce our overweening army of dip- 
lomatic spies and busybodies ; abstain from meddling 
in everybody's quarrels ; redeem from taxation the work- 
man's necessaries, — a free breakfast-table ; peremptorily 
legislate against the custom of primogeniture ; encourage 
the distribution and transfer of land ; and, under the 
aegis of the ballot, protect from the tyranny of the land- 
lord and employer their tenants and workmen." 

" Very good, perhaps, all of them," replied Sir Charles ; 
" but some not at the moment possible, and all together 
are not exhaustive. Why do you not go to the bottom 
of social needs ? You say nothing about health legis- 
lation : are you indifferent to the sanitary condition of 
the people ? You have not hinted at education, 
waste lands, emigration " — 

" Oh ! I am opposed to that altogether." 

" I forgot : you are a manufacturer, yet the last man 
of whom I should believe that selfishness had warped 
the judgment. You have done and endured more than 
any living statesman for the advantage of your fellow- 
citizens, so that I will not cast at you the aspersion of 
class-blindness. Still I can scarcely think you have 
looked at this matter in the pure light of patriotism, and 
not within the narrow scope of trade interests." 

" Quite unjust. Our best economists reprehend the 
policy of depleting our labor-market. Emigration is a 



A THOEOUGII-PACED BEFOlvMER. 103 

timely remedy for adversity, and to be very sparingly 
used. Labor is our richest vein " — 

" We may have too much of it. Take it as a fact, 
that you now have more than you can use, and the unem- 
ployed part is starving : what will you do with them ? " 

" That is a mere temporary and casual depression, to 
which all classes are liable " — 

" But," said Sir Charles, " which none can so ill bear. 
Nay, what if it is permanent ? You look to increased 
trade. Do you suppose we are to retain our manufac- 
turing pre-eminence, when every country, new and old, 
is competing with us ? Can our trade, I ask you hon- 
estly to consider, increase at the rate of our population ? 
Besides, for Heaven's sake, look at the thing as a man ! 
Grant that we have a hundred thousand men out of 
work, and hundreds of thousands more dependent on 
them : do you think it no small thing that the vast 
mass should be left for one, two, three years, seething in 
sorrow and distress, while they are waiting for trade ? 
By the time that comes, they may have gone beyond the 
hope of rescue. Ah ! if an elastic trade comes back to- 
morrow, you can never make those people what they 
were : ought we not to have forecast that they should 
not be what they are ? But I contend that depression 
has become chronic, the poverty more wide-spread and 
persistent: how, then, shall we, who represent these 
classes among the rest, face the prospect? " 

Here interposed a gentleman high in office, a pure, 
keen, rigid economist of the highest intellectual and po- 
litical rank. 

" My dear Sterling, pardon me if I say you are talk- 
ing wildly. Perhaps you don't see that you are verging 



104 GINX'S BABY. 

on rank communism. The working of economic laws 
can be as infallibly projected as a solar eclipse. You 
can secure no class from periodic calamity, and so regu- 
late laws of supply and demand by guiding-wheels of 
legislation and taxation as to save every man from pen- 
ury. You wish us to send away our bone and sinew be- 
cause we have no present employment for it ; and next 
year, or the year after, under a recovered trade, you will 
be wringing your hands, and cursing the folly that 
prompted you to do it." 

" I should be too glad of the opportunity," replied Sir 
Charles sturdily : " but, in truth, there is an incubus of 
excessive numbers, that no revival of trade will provide 
for, even if it is beyond our extremest hopes ; and I, for 
one, will not be guilty of the inhumanity of keeping fel- 
low-creatures in misery till we can find a use for them. 
You have forgotten that there are other economic laws 
besides those you glance at. Several millions of acres of 
unoccupied land, belonging, in a sense, to the people of 
this country, are to be kept untilled in defiance of the 
plainest policy that Nature and God have indicated to 
us ; namely, that labor should come in contact with land. 
For waut of this conjunction, our colonies are to be 
checked, while at home miserable millions are gaping for 
work and food." 

" Oh I let them take themselves out. There are too 
many going already. They will follow natural laws ; and 
where labor is required, thither the stream will flow." 

" Mere surface-talk, my clever friend," replied the 
other. " The men who are trooping out at their own 
expense are our most sober, careful, and energetic work- 
men ; else they could not go. They go because here so 



A THOROUGH-PACED REFORMER. 105 

many indifferent ones are weighing down their shoulders. 
And where do most of them go to ? Not to strengthen 
and develop our colonies, but the United States, — a not 
always friendly people, and, just now, your free-trader's 
bugbear." 

" Well, well," said the minister, " drop that question. 
It's utterly impracticable at this time. We couldn't en- 
tertain the demand for State-help for an instant. I tell 
you again, you're a Fouricrite. You virtually propose 
to put your hand in the pocket of the upper classes to 
pay all sorts of expenses for the lower." 

"-You may call me a communist, if you please," re- 
plied Sir Charles Sterling : " I do not shrink from shad- 
ows. Perhaps I am in favor of something nearer to com- 
munism than our present form of society. One thing I 
am clear about : no state of society is healthy wherein 
every man does not own himself to be the guardian of 
the interests of the community, as well as his own ; 
does not see that he is bound, morally, and as a matter 
of public policy, to add to his neighbor's well-being as 
well as his own. Does not society, by its protection and 
aggregation, make it possible for the rich to gi-owrich, 
the genius and the ambitious man to pursue their aims, 
the merchant to gather his vails, the noble to enjoy his 
lands ? For these privileges there is more or less to 
pay ; and it may be that the proper proportion which the 
capable classes should be called upon to contribute to the 
common-weal has never been correctly adjusted. The 
first-fruit of practical Christianity was community of 
goods ; and, but for human selfishness, we might hope 
for a Utopian era ; when, while it should be ruled, that 
if a man would not work, neither should he eat, there 



10G GIXX'S BABY. 

should also be brought home to every man the care of 
his poorer or weaker or less competent brother. I never 
expect to see that. I do hope to see the men of greatest 
ability pay more generously for the privileges they en- 
joy. The best policy for them too. The better the con- 
dition of the general community, the better for them- 
selves. You cannot alarm me with epithets. But these 
views are, happily, not essential to the support of the 
emigration policy." 

" Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! mad as a March hare ! " cried 
the minister as he stumped from the room. 

" Sterling is a good fellow," said he to a colleague with 
whom he walked down Pall Mall, " and a thorough- 
paced Liberal. Besides, he carries great weight in the 
House. But he is an enthusiast, and therefore not 
always quite practical." 

By practical, the minister meant, not that which might 
well and to advantage be done if good and able men 
would resolve to do it, spite of all hinderances, but that 
winch, upon a cunning review of party balances and a 
judicious probing of public opinion, seemed to be a poli- 
cy fit for his party to pursue. The first, original and 
masterly statesmen are needed to initiate and perform : 
the other is simply the art of a genius who knows how 
most adroitly to manipulate people and circumstances. 



IV.— Very Broad Views. 



Sir Charles Sterling, Mr. Joshua Hale, and 
others continued the conversation interrupted by the min- 
ister's exit, — what was to be done with Ginx'sBaby? 



VERT BROAD VIEWS.. 10? 

In the great dissected map of society, what niches were 
cut out tor him, and all like him, to fill ? Most of the 
politicians were for leaving that to himself to find out. 
The term, " law of supply and demand," was freely ban- 
died between them, as it is in many journals nowadays, 
with little object save to shut up avenues of discussion 
by a high-sounding phrase. 

Then, of these " statesmen," most clung, if not to self- 
interest, to personal crotchets. What is more darling to 
a man than the child of his intellect or fancy ? How the 
poor poetaster hugs his tawdry verses, as if they were the 
imperial ornaments of genius! Just in the same way 
does the politician love the policies himself hath devised, 
pressing them forward at all hazards, while he is blind 
to the utility of others. This is the basis of that aspect 
of selfishness which often mars, in the approbation of a 
country, a really honest statesmanship, — an egotistic 
tenacity of one's own creature as the best, which yet is 
not the criminal selfishness of ambition. Still, that ego- 
tism is not seldom disastrous to the people's interests. 
While these statesmen nursed their own bantlings, and 
held them up to national notice, they were apt to avoid, 
or too lightly regard, the views of men as able as them- 
selves. For instance, Joshua Hale — who is far above 
these remarks generally — had put forth a scheme for 
the solution of the St. Helena property question, — very 
likely a good one, albeit revolutionary ; and nothing 
would convince him that any other could succeed. He 
wished every man in St. Helena (a turbulent adjunct 
of the British Empire) to be a landowner; and, I do 
think, neither desired nor hoped that any man in that 
island should be happy until he was one. Yet there 



108 GINX'S BABY. 

were other men ready to offer simpler remedies, and to 
prove, that, if every man in St. Helena became a land- 
owner, it would become a very hell upon earth, and more 
unmanageable than it was before. If these gentlemen 
do not sacrifice their pet fancies for the sake of a settle- 
ment, what will become of St. Helena? 

Just now they were discussing Ginx's Baby. One 
thought that repeal of the poor-laws and a new system 
of relief would reach his case ; another saw the root of 
the baby's sorrow in trades' unions ; a third pro- 
pounded co-operative manufactures ; a fourth suggested 
that a vast source of income lay untouched in the seas 
about the kingdom which swarmed with porpoises, and 
showed how certain parts of these animals were avail- 
able for food, others for leather, others for a delicious 
oil that would be sweeter and more pleasant than butter ; 
a fifth desired a law to repress the tendency of Scotch 
peers to evict tenants, and convert arable lands into 
sheep-walks and deer-forests ; a sixth maintained that 
there were waste lands in the kingdom, of capacity to 
support hungry millions. In fact, earth, heaven, and 
seas were to be regenerated by act of Parliament for 
the benefit of Ginx's Baby and the people of England. 
Sir Charles listened impatiently, and at last burst forth 
again. 

He said, " When you consider it, what we are all 
trying to do nowadays is — vulgarly — to improve the 
breed ; but we go to work in a roundabout way. At 
the outset, we are met by the depreciated state of part 
of the existing generation ; and one problem is to pre- 
vent these depreciated people from increasing, or to get 
them to increase healthily. No one seems to have gone 



VERT BROAD VIEWS. 109 

directly to such a problem as that. The difficulties to 
be faced are tremendous. Your dirtiest British young- 
ster is hedged round with principles of an inviolable lib- 
erty and rights of habeas corpus. You let his father 
and mother, or any one who will save you the trouble 
of looking after him, mould him in his years of tender- 
ness as they please. If they happen to leave him a 
walking invalid, you take him into the poorhouse ; if 
they bring him up a tbief, you whip him, and keep him 
at high cost at Millbank or Dartmoor ; if his passions, 
never controlled, break out into murder and rape, you 
may hang him, unless his crime has been so atrocious as 
to attract the benevolent interest of the Home Secre- 
tary ; if he commit suicide, you hold a coroner's inquest, 
which also costs money ; and, however he dies, you give 
him a deal coffin, and bury him. Yet I may prove to 
you that this being, whom you treat like a dog at a fair, 
never had a day's, no, nor an hour's, contact with good- 
ness, purity, truth, or even human kindness ; never had 
an opportunity of learning any thing better. "What 
rioht bave you, then, to hunt him like a wild beast, and 
kick him and whip him, and fetter him, and hang him by 
expensive complicated machinery, when you have done 
nothing to teach him any of the duties of a citizen? 

" Stop, stop, Sir Charles ! you are too virulent. There 
are endless means of improving your lad, — charities 
without number " — 

" Yes, that will never reach bim." 

" Never mind : they may, you know. Industrial 
schools, reformatories, asylums, hospitals, Peabody- 
buildings, poor-laws. Everybody is working to improve 
the condition of the poor man. Sanitary administration 
goes to his house, and makes it habitable." 



110 GINX'S BABY. 

" Very ! " interjected Sir Charles Sterling dryly. 

" Factory-laws protect and educate factory-chil- 
dren " — 

" They don't educate in one case out of ten. They 
don't feed them, clothe them, give them amusement and 
cultivation, do they ? " 

" Certainly not ! That would be ridiculous ! " 

" Why, the question is, whether that would be ridicu- 
lous," replied Sir Charles. " I do not say it can be 
done ; but, in order to transform the next generation, 
what we should aim at is to provide substitutes for bad 
homes, evil training, unhealthy air, food and dulness, 
and terrible ignorance, in happier scenes, better teach- 
ing, proper conditions of physical life, sane amusements, 
and a higher cultivation. I dare say you would think 
me a lunatic if I proposed that government should es- 
tablish music-halls and gymnasia all over the country ; 
but you, Mr. Fissure, voted for the baths and wash- 
houses." 

" Who's to pay for all this ? " asked Mr. Fissure 
pertinently. 

" The State, which means society ; the whole of which 
is directly interested. I tell you, a million of children 
are crying to us to set them free from the despotism of 
a crime and ignorance protected by law." 

" That is striking ; but you are treading on delicate 
ground. The liberty of the subject " — 

" Exactly what I expected you to say. These words 
can be used in defence of almost any injustice and 
tyranny. Such terms as ' political economy,' ' commu- 
nism,' ' socialism/ are bandied about in the same way. 
Yet propositions coming fairly within these terms ara 



VERT BROAD VIEWS., Ill 

often mentioned with approval by the very persons Avho 
cast them at you. In a report of a recent royal com- 
mission, I find that one of the commissioners is quite as 
revolutionary as I am. He says it is right by law to 
secure that no child shall be cruelly treated or mentally 
neglected, over-worked or under-educated. Some people 
would call that communism, I fancy ; but I think him 
to be correct as a political economist in that broad 
proposition. Why ? Because a child's relation to the 
State is wider, more permanent, and more important, 
than his relation to his parents. If he is in danger of 
being depreciated and damned for good citizenship, the 
State must rescue him." 

" A paternal and maternal government together ! " 
cries Lord Namby, — "a government of nurses. You 
know I should like to stop the production of children 
among the lower orders. Your propositions are far in 
advance of my radicalism. The State must sometimes 
interfere between parent and child ; for instance, in 
education, or protection from cruelty. But, if I under- 
stand you, you actually contemplate a general refining 
and elevation of the working-class by legislative 
means." 

" Assuredly ! I should aim to cultivate their morals, 
refine their tastes, manners, habits. I wish to lift from 
them that ever-depressing sense of hopelessness which 
keeps them in the dust." 

" So do most men ; but you must do that by personal 
and private influences, not by State enactments. How 
would you do it ? " 

" How ? I think I could draw up a programme. For 
instance : Expatriate a million to reduce the competition 



112 GINX's BABV. 

that keeps poor devils on half-rations, or sends them to 
the poor-house ; take all the sick, maimed, old, and 
incapable poor, into workhouses managed by humane 
men, and not by ghouls ; forbid such people to marry 
and propagate weakness ; legislate for compulsory im- 
provements of workmen's dwellings, — and, if needful, 
lend the money to execute it ; extend and enforce the 
health laws ; open free libraries and places of rational 
amusement with an imperial bounty through the coun- 
try ; instead of spending thousands on dilettanti syco- 
phants at one end of the metropolis, distribute your art 
and amusement to the kingdom at large ; the rich have 
their museums, libraries, and clubs ; provide them for the 
poor ; establish temporary homes for lying-in women ? 
multiply your baths and washhouses till there is no 
excuse for a dirty person ; educate ; provide day-schools 
for every proper child, and industrial or reformatory 
schools for every improper one ; open advanced high 
schools for the best pupils, and found scholarships to the 
universities ; erect other schools for technical training ; 
oiler to teach trades and agriculture to all comers for 
nothing, — you would soon neutralize your bugbear of 
trade' s-unionism ; teach morals, teach science, teach 
art, teach them to amuse themselves like men, and not 
like brutes. In a land so wealthy, the programme is not 
impracticable, though severe. As the end to be attained 
is the welfare of future generations, no good reason 
could be urged why they should not contribute towards 
the cost of it, — a better debt to leave to posterity than 
the incubus of an irrational war." 

Will any sane political practitioner wonder to be told, 
that, at the end of this harangue, the smoking-room 



PARTY TACTICS. 113 

party broke up, and that some, as they laughed good- 
humoredly over Sterling's egregia, recalled the number 
of glasses of inspirited seltzer swallowed by the orator ? 
lie was so far in advance of the most radical reformer, 
that there was no hope of overtaking him for an era or 
two : so they determined to fancy they had left him be- 
hind. 



V. — Party Tactics, and Political Obstructions to Social 
Reform. 

In the club, our hero revelled a while under the pro- 
tection of Sir Charles Sterling, and the petting of 
peers, members of Parliament, and loungers who swarm 
therein. Certain gentlemen of Stock-Exchange man- 
nerism and dressiness gave the protege the go-by,. and 
even sneered at those who noticed him with kindness. 
But then these are of the men with whom every question 
is checked by money, and is balanced on the pivot of 
profit and loss. I dare say some of them thought the 
worse of Judas only because he had made so small a 
gain out of his celebrated transaction. To foster Ginx's 
Baby in the club as a recognition of the important 
questions surrounding him, though these questions in- 
volved hundreds of thousands of other cases, was to 
them ridiculous. Of far greater consequence was it, in 
their eyes, to settle a dispute between two extravagant 
fools at Constantinople and Cairo, and quicken the 
sluggishness of Turkish consols or Egyptian 9 per cents. 
I do not cast stones at them : every man must look at a 
thing with his own eyes. . 

But it was curious to note how the baby's fortunes 



114 GISTX'S BABY. 

shifted in the club. There were times when he was a 
pet chucked under chin by the elder stagers, favored 
wiih a smile from a cabinet minister, and now and then 
blessed with a nod from Mr. Joshua Hale. Then, 
again, every one seemed to forget him ; and he was for 
months left unnoticed to the chance-kindness of the 
menials, until, some case similar to his own happening to 
evoke discussion in the press, there would be a general 
inquiry for him. The porter, Mr. Smirke, had suc- 
ceeded, by means of a detective, in discovering the boy's 
name ; but his parents were then half-way to Canada. 

The members of the Fogy Club opposite, hearing 
that so interesting a foundling was being cherished by 
their opponents, politely asked leave to examine him ; 
and he occasionally visited them. They treated him 
kindly, and discussed his condition with earnestness. 
The leaders of the party debated whether he might not, 
with advantage, be taken out of their opponents' hands. 
Some thought that a judicious use of him might win 
popularity ; but others objected that it would be perilous 
for them to mix themselves up with so doleful an in- 
terest. In the result, the Fogies tipped young Ginx. but 
did not commit themselves for or against him. Thus a 
long time elapsed ; and our hero had grown old enough 
to be a page. He had received food, clothing, and 
good will ; but no one had thought of giving him an 
education. Sometimes he became obstreperous. He 
played tricks with the club cutleiy, and diverted its 
silver to improper uses ; he laid traps for upsetting 
aged and infirm legislators ; he tried the. coolness of the 
youngest and best-natured members of Parliament by 
popping up in strange places, and exhibiting unseemly 



PARTY TACTICS. 115 

attitudes. At length, by unanimous consent, lie was 
decreed to be a nuisance, and a few days would have 
revoked bis license at tbe club. 

No sooner did tbe Fogies get wind of ibis than they 
manoeuvred to get Ginx's Baby under theiv own man- 
agement. They instructed their " organs," as they 
called tbem, to pipe to popular feeling on tbe disgrace- 
ful apatby of tbe Radicals in regard to tbe foundling. 
TJiey bad bim waylaid and treated to confectionery by 
their emissaries ; and once or twice succeeded in abduct- 
ing bim, and sending bim down to tbe country with their 
party's candidates, for exhibition at elections. 

The Radicals resented this conduct extremely. Giux's 
Baby was brought back to the club, and restored to 
favor. The government papers were instructed to detail 
how much he was petted and talked about by the party ; 
to declare how needless was the popular excitement on 
his behalf; and to prove that he must, without any 
special legislation, be benefited by the extraordinary 
organic changes then being made in the constitution of 
the country. 

Sir Charles Sterling resumed his interest in the boy. 
He had been gallantly aiding his party in other ques- 
tions. There was the Timbuctoo question. A miserable 
desert chief had shut up a wandering Englishman not 
possessed of wit enough to keep his head out of danger. 
There was a general impression that English honor was 
at stake ; and the previous Fogy government had ordered 
an expedition to cross the desert, and punish the sheik. 
You would never believe what it cost if you had not seen 
the bill. Ten millions sterling was as good as buried in 
the desert, when one-tenth of it would have saved a 



116 GINX'S BABY. 

hundred thousand people from starvation at home, and 
one hundredth part of it would have taken the fetters 
oil* the hapless prisoner's feet. 

There was the St. Helena question always brooding 
over Parliament. St. Helena was a constituent part of 
the British Empire. Every patriot agreed that the em- 
pire without it would be incomplete ; and was so far 
right, that its subtraction would have left the empire by 
so muchness. Most of its inhabitants were aboriginal, 
— a mercurial race, full of fire, quick-witted, and gifted 
with the exuberant eloquence of savages, but deficient 
in dignity and self-control. Before any one else had 
been given them by Providence to fight, they slaughtered 
and ravaged one another. Our intrusive British ances- 
tors stepped upon the island, and, being strong men, 
mowed down the islanders like wheat, and appropriated 
the lands their swords had cleared. Still the aborigines 
held out in corners, ami defied the conquerors. The 
latter ground them down, confiscated the property of 
their half-dozen chiefs, and distributed it among them- 
selves. By way of showing their imperial imperious- 
ness, they built over some ruins left by their devastations 
a great church, in which they ordered all the islanders 
to worship. This was at first abomination to the 
islanders, who fought like devils whenever they could, 
and ended by accepting the religion of their foes. But 
the conquerors, afterwards choosing to change their own 
faith, resolved th.tt the islanders should do so too. 
Forthwith they confiscated the big church and burying- 
ground, and, distributing part of the land and spoils 
among their most prominent scamps, erected a new 
edifice of quite a different character, in which the 



PARTY TACTICS. 117 

natives swore they could neither see nor hear, and their 
own clerics warned them they would certainly he 
damned. To make the complications more intricate, 
these clerics owed allegiance to an ancient woman in a 
distant country, who had all the meddlesomeness and 
petty jealousy of her sex, and was, besides, much at- 
tached to some clever wooers of hers, — wily sinners who 
covered their aims under the semblance of ultra-extreme 
passion for her. The prominent scamps died, to be suc- 
ceeded by their children, or other of the hated con- 
querors, from generation to generation. The islanders 
w.ent on increasing and protesting. They starved upon 
the lands, and shot the landlords when a few gave them 
the chance ; for most lived away in their own country, 
and left the property to be administered by agents. The 
home government had again and again been obliged to 
assist these people with soldiers, to provide an armed 
police, to shoot down mobs, to catch a ringleader here 
or there and send him to Fernando Po, or to deprive 
whole villages of ordinary civil rights. Then the yam- 
crop failed, and nearly half the people left the island 
and crossed the seas, where they continued to hate and 
to plot against those whose misfortune it had been to 
get a legacy of the island from their fathers. It would 
be wearisome to recount the absurdities on both sides, 
the stupidity or criminal absence of tact from time to 
time shown by the home government, the resolve never 
to be quiet exhibited, by the natives, under the prompt- 
ing of their clerics. Upon 

" That common stage of novelty " 

there were ever springing up fresh difficulties. Secret 



118 GINX'S BABY. 

clubs were formed for murder and reprisal. A body 
called the " Yellows " had bound themselves by private 
oaths to keep up the memory of the religious victories of 
their predecessors, and to worry the clerical party in 
every possible way. Their pleasure was to go about in- 
sanely' blowing rams'-homs, carrying flags, and bearing 
oranges in their hands. The islanders hated oranges, 
and at every opportunity cracked the skulls of the 
orange-bearers with brutal weapons peculiar to the 
island. These, in return, cracked native skulls. The 
whole island was in a state of perpetual commotion. 
Still its general condition improved, its farms grew 
prosperous; and a joint-stock company had built a mill 
for converting cocoanut-fibre into horse-cloths, which 
yielded large profits. The memory of past events might 
well have been buried : but the clerics, in the interest of 
the old woman, fanned the embers ; and the infamous 
bidding for popularity of parties at home served to keep 
alive passions that would naturally have died out. Be- 
sides, latterly, folly had been too organized on both 
sides to suffer oblivion. Everybody was tired of the 
squabbles of St. Helena. At length there was a general 
movement in the interests of peace ; and, to pacify the 
islanders, Parliament was asked to pull down the wings 
of the old church-edifice, remove some of the graves, 
and cut off a large piece of the graveyard. Some were 
in favor, also, of dividing all the farms in the country 
among the aborigines ; but the difficulty was, to know 
how, at the same time, to satisfy the present occupiers. 
These schemes Avere topics of high debate ; upon them 
the fortunes of government rose and fell ; and, while 
they were agitated, Ginx's Baby could have no chance 
of a parliamentary heaving. 



AMATEUR DEBATING. 110 

Many other matters of singular indifference had eaten 
up the legislative time : but at last the increasing num- 
ber of wretched infants throughout the country began to 
alarm the people ; and Sir Charles Sterling thought the 
time had come to move on behalf of Ginx's Baby and 
his fellows; 



VI. — Amateur Debating in a Hicn Legislative Body. 

While Sir Charles was trying to get the government 
to " give him a night " to debate the Ginx's Baby case, 
and while associations were being formed in the metrop- 
olis for disposing of him by expatriation or otherwise, 
a busy peer, without notice to anybody, suddenly brought 
the subject before the House of Lords. As he had 
never seen the baby, and knew nothing, or very little, 
about him, I need scarcely report the elaborate speech 
in which he asked for aristocratic sympathy on his be- 
half. He proposed to send him to the antipodes at the 
expense of the nation. 

The Minister for the Accidental Accompaniments of 
the Empire was a clever man, — keen, genial, subtle, 
two-edged ; a gentlemanly and not thorough disciple of 
Machiavel ; able to lead parliamentary forlorn hopes, 
and plant flags on breaches, or to cover retreats with 
brilliant skirmishing ; deft, but never deep ; much 
moved, too, by the opinions of his permanent staff. 
These, on the night in question, had plied him well with 
hackneyed objections ; but to see him get up and re- 
lieve himself of them — the air of originality, the really 
original air he threw around them, the absurd light 
which he turned full on the weaknesses of his noble 



120 GIXX'S BABY. 

friend's propositions — was as beautiful to an indifferent 
critic as it was saddening to the man who had at heart 
the sorrows of his kind. If that minister lived long, he 
would be forced to adopt and advocate in as pretty a 
manner the policy he was dissecting. 

Lord Munnibagge, a great authority in economic 
matters, said that a weaker case had never been pre- 
sented to Parliament. To send away Ginx's Baby to 
a colony, at imperial expense, was at once to rob the 
pockets of the rich, and to decrease our labor-power. 
There was no necessity for it. Ginx's Baby could not 
starve in a country like this. lie (Lord Munnibagge) 
had never heard of a case of a baby starving. There 
was no such widespread distress as was represented by 
the noble lord. There were occasional periods of stag- 
nation in trade ; and no doubt, in these periods, the 
poorer classes would suffer : but trade was elastic; and, 
even if it were granted that the present was a period 
when employment had failed, the time was not far oif 
when trade would recuperate. (Cheers.) Ginx's Baby, 
and all other babies, would not then wish to go away. 
People were always making exaggerated statements 
about the condition of the poor. He (Lord Munni- 
bagge) did not credit them. He believed the country, 
though temporarily depressed by financial collapses, to 
be in a most healthy state. (Hear, hear.) It was ab- 
surd to say otherwise, when it was shown by the board- 
of-trade returns that we were growing richer every 
day. (Cheers.) Of course, Ginx's Baby must be grow- 
ing richer with the rest. Was not that a complete an- 
swer to the noble lord's plaintive outcries? (Cheers 
and laughter.) That the population of a country was 



AMATEUR DEBATING. 121 

a great fraction of its wealth was an elementary princi- 
ple of political economy. He thought, from the high 
rates of wages, that there were not too many, but too 
few, laborers in the country. He should oppose the 
motion. (Cheers.) 

Two or three noble lords repeated similar platitudes, 
guarding themselves as carefully from any reference to 
facts, or to the question whether high rates of wages 
might not be the concomitants simply of high prices of 
necessaries, or to the yet wider question whether colo- 
nial development might not have something to do with 
progress at home. The noble lord who had rushed un- 
prepared into (he arena was unequal to the forces mar- 
shalled against him, and withdrew his motion. 

Thus the great debate collapsed. The lords were re- 
lieved that an awkward question had so easily been 
shifted. The newspapers on the ministerial side declared 
that this debate had proved the futility of the Ginx's 
Baby expatriation question. 

" So able an authority as Lord Munnibagge had estab- 
lished that there was no necessity for the interference of 
government in the case of Ginx's Baby or any other 
babies or persons. The lucid and decisive statement 
of the Secretary for the Accidental Accompaniments of 
the Empire had shown how impossible it was for the im- 
perial government to take part in a great scheme of ex- 
patriation ; how impolitic to endeavor to affect the 
ordinary laws of free movement to the colonies." 

Surely, after this, the expatriation people hid their 
lights under a bushel ! 

The government refused to find a night for Sir Charles 
Sterling ; and, after the Lords' debate, he did not see his 



122 GINX'S BABY. 

way to force a motion in the Lower House. Meanwhile 
Ginx's Baby once more decided a turn in his own fate. 
Tired of the slow life of the club, and shivering amid the 
chill indifference of his patrons, he borrowed, without 
leave, some clothes from an inmate's room, with a few 
silver forks and spoons, and decamped. Whether the 
baronet and the club were bashful of public ridicule, or 
glad to be rid of the charge, I know not ; but no attempt 
was made to recover him. 



PART V. 

* WHAT GINX'S BABY DID WHH HIMSELF. 

" A full-formed horse will, in any market, bring from twen'y to 
as high as two hundred Friedrichs d'or: such is his worth to the 
world. A full-formed man is not only worth nothing to the world, 
but the world could afford him a round sum would he simply engage 
to go and hang himself." — Sartor Resartus. 

The Last Chapter. 

OUR hero was nearly fifteen years old when he left 
the club to plunge into the world. He was not 
long in converting his spoils into money, and a very 
short time in spending it. Then he had to pit his wits 
against starvation; and some of his throws were desper- 
ate. Wherever he went, the world seemed terribly full. 
If he answered an advertisement for an errand-boy, there 
were a score kicking their heels at the rendezvous 
before him. Did he try to learn a useful trade, thou- 
sands of adepts were not only ready to underbid him, 
but to knock him on the head for an interloper. Even 
the thieves, to whom he gravitated, were jealous of his 
accession, because there were too many competitors 
already in their department. Through his career of 
penury, of honest and dishonest callings, of 'scapes and 

123 



124 GINX'S BABY. 

captures, imprisonments and other punishments, a year's 
reading of metropolitan police-reports would furnish the 
exact counterpart. 

I don't know how many years after his flight from 
Pall Mall, one dim midnight, I, returning from Rich- 
mond, lounged over Vauxhall Bridge, listening to the 
low lapping of the current beneath the arches ; looking 
above to the stars, and along the dark polished surface 
that reflected a thousand lights in its undulations ; feel- 
ing the awfulness of the dense, suppressed life that was 
wrapped within the gloom and calm of the hour. I sud- 
denly saw a shadow, a human shadow, that, at the sound 
of my footstep, quickly crossed my dreamy vision, — 
quickly, noiselessly came and went before my eyes, until 
it stood up high and outlined against the strangely- 
mingled haze. It looked like the ghost of a slight-formed 
man, hatless and coatless ; and for a moment I saw at its 
upper extremity the dull flash as of a human face in the 
gloom, before the shadow leaped out far into the night. 
Splash ! When my startled eyes looked down upon the 
glancing, waving ebony, I thought I could trace a white 
coruscation of foam spreading out into the darkness, 
instantly to dissipate and be lost forever. 

I did not then know what form it was that swilled 
down below the glistening current. Had I known that 
it was Ginx's Baby, I should perhaps have thought, " So- 
ciety, which, in the sacred names of Law and Charity, 
forbade the father to throw his child over Vauxhall 
Bridge at a time Avhen he was alike unconscious of life 
and death, has at last itself driven him over the parapet 
into the greedy waters " 



THE LAST CHAPTER. 125 

Philosophers, philanthropists, politicians, Papists and 
Protestants, poor-law ministers and parish-officers, while 
you have been theorizing and discussing, debating, 
wrangling, legislating, and administering, — Good God 1 
gentlemen, between you all, where has Ginx's Baby 
gone to? 



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